Jos Dijsselhof supports market access by small and medium-sized companies as key to the recovery

• The CEO of SIX and Chairman of BME is optimistic about IPOs in the coming months and defends the transformative power of technology.
• The Medcap Forum concludes its seventeenth edition, the second held remotely, with 3,600 connections to its panels and discovery meetings via streaming.
• The importance of financial markets as a means of financing for companies of all sizes was the central idea of the third and last day of the event.
• The managers of a hundred companies showed investors their growth and recovery plans for the post Covid-19 scenario.

Jos Dijsselhof, CEO of SIX and Chairman of BME, opened the third and final day of the Medcap Forum. During his speech, he highlighted the greater visibility that listing on the stock exchange provides to companies, as well as the advantages it brings in terms of reputation and growth. He also pointed out the importance of BME Growth in providing financing to SMEs, as they will be key to the economic recovery and the end of the pandemic. In this regard, the CEO of SIX said that the entire ecosystem and the financial players must be aligned and work in the same direction to improve SMEs' access to markets.

Jos Dijsselhof was also optimistic about the recovery of the economy and the evolution of the pandemic, which he said has accelerated digitalisation processes. In this regard, he highlighted how blockchain technology can help to improve efficiency and access to markets. Another key aspect has been the Capital Markets Union project, whose pace he believes needs to be accelerated to be able to face international competition more solidly. The CEO of SIX also stated that the outlook for IPOs in Spain and Switzerland is positive.

José Carlos García de Quevedo, Chairman of Spanish state-owned bank ICO, was the main speaker on the following panel. After being introduced by the General Manager of BME Growth, Jesús González Nieto-Márquez, the Chairman of ICO stressed that post-Covid-19 growth will be more sustainable and will bring along greater digitalisation. He also supported BME's objective of helping  SMEs to grow as well as their work in the Pre-Market Environment, the initiative launched by BME to help small and medium-sized companies to access the financial markets. García de Quevedo also pointed out that ICO's guarantee programmes, including those involving BME’s Fixed Income market, MARF, have been among the most successful in Europe.

The third panel of the day, closely related to the previous one, reflected on the role of the stock market as an efficient growth tool for companies. Marian Fernández, head of macroeconomics at Andbank Spain, moderated the panel, which included Ibon Naberan, General Manager and CFO of All Iron Socimi; Manuel de Luna, Deputy CFO of Ebro Foods; Daniel Lozano, Director of Investor Relations and Communication at Grenergy, and Susana Álvarez, Professor of Financial Economics at the University of Oviedo. 

The speakers agreed that being a listed company offers companies visibility, discipline, access to new investors to finance their growth and also liquidity and transparency for their shareholders. They also emphasised how access to the stock market lowers the cost of raising financing.

The impact of the crisis on strategic sectors and their prospects, on the one hand, and the healthcare and biotechnology sectors, on the other, took centre stage during the last two panels of the Medcap Forum. The first of these was moderated by Arturo Gayoso, Partner at Deloitte, and featured representatives from Atom Hoteles, Atresmedia and Metrovacesa. They highlighted the adaptability of their respective sectors during the Covid-19 crisis. In terms of the lessons for the future, they highlighted, among others, the growing power of digitalisation, how changes in the way of working have a direct impact on all sectors of the economy, and the increase in skills across the board following this experience.

The panel dedicated to healthcare and biotechnology, moderated by Jorge Bagán, partner at Deloitte, featured Oryzon Genomics, Reig Jofre and Pharmamar. The speakers highlighted the good pace of the vaccination process, pointing out how without health there is no economy and stressing the greater importance of prevention and healthcare over treatment.

They also highlighted how the search for drugs to combat the pandemic has brought about opportunities for the sector and fostered commercial agreements, while serving as a catalyst, encouraging digitalisation and greater public-private collaboration. The speakers also discussed the performance of their companies’ main financial benchmarks and stock prices  during the pandemic, as well as the challenges and prospects for consolidation.

The seventeenth edition of the Medcap Forum closes with 3,600 connections to the various panels and discovery meetings, which has hit a record high in the number of registered investors, with more than 230, more than half of them international.