Events

Date: Thursday 5 February 2009, 15:00 – 17:15
Venue: EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation (Tokyo Office)

Organised by: EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation
Supported by: Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation

Overview:
“Lack of successor” was the reason for 70,000 Japanese enterprises to close down, out of 290,000 business failures in Japan during 2006. The percentage of businesses transferred to family members is constantly decreasing, shifting from over 90% in 1986 to 60% in 2006 (White Paper on Small and Medium Enterprises in Japan, 2006). As over 99% of enterprises in Japan are SMEs, supporting successful business transfers of SMEs is an important policy priority to prevent businesses with competitive technologies and know-how from disappearing. In this context, a new legislation to support SMEs business transfers was introduced in Japan in October 2008.

Similarly in Europe, about one third of business failures are said to occur in the context of a business transfer. Given that, in the next decade, up to 690,000 businesses (providing 2.8 million jobs) will have to be transferred each year, the European Commission is encouraging Member States to improve the conditions for business transfers, through such measures as administrative simplification, effective tax reductions and easier access to financial support for the takeover of a business.

In this seminar, speakers from the European Commission and Japan’s Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation introduced the EU and Japanese policies for supporting the successful transfer of Small & Medium Enterprises. The seminar was also joined by a speaker from the French Ministry of Economy, Industry and Employment to introduce the case of one EU Member States (France).

Programme: