Diego Barría and Francisco Castañeda, professors at the Faculty of Administration and Economics of Universidad de Santiago, participated in a project of Jean Monnet Networks, an action co-funded by the European Union and led by the University of Milan.
On June 25th and 26th, representatives of Europe, Asia and the Americas participated in the XIV European Workshop "Major Public Enterprises in a Global Perspective”, in Milan, Italy.
Renowned international experts participated as speakers, like Massimo Florio of University of Milan; Lars-Erik Fredrickson (Chair OECD Working Party on State Ownership and Privatization Practices); and Richard Kozul-Wright, UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) representative.
Dr Francisco Castañeda, representative of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, said that the goal after this experience is to produce a working paper by September 2015 for CIRIEC-Belgium and University of Milan. “We agreed in publishing a paper in the Italian Journal of Public Economics by December 2015,” he added.
Professors Barría and Castañeda gave a presentation during the conference and they said that corporate governance of state-owned enterprises has become a subject of great interest. “The OECD has been promoting best practices with regards to transparency, dissemination of information, election of public companies directors and the relation with stakeholders,” they said.
According to these economists, indicators like financial performance, financial leverage levels, covenants, corporate bond issuance, and alternatives for getting resources to undertake new investment projects that allow sustainability in this type of company, should be evaluated.
However, the "State-Owned Enterprises in the Market Place" OECD guidelines are more complex to implement in big state-owned companies.
The Jean Monnet European Networks are made up of six universities:
• Università degli Studi di Milano (leading University) – Italy
• Ǻbo Akademi University School of Business and Economics – Finland
• University of Greenwich – United Kingdom
• Universität Leipzig – Germany
• Université de Rouen – France
• WU Wirtschaftuniversität – Austria
Translated by Marcela Contreras
