Catalonia promotes itself among 100 senior French executives in Lyon, at the influential Wine & Business Club

The Catalan Government promoted Catalonia as an investment option on Thursday afternoon in Lyon to the France’s most influential business circle, the Wine & Business Club. Over 100 senior French executives got to know first-hand the business opportunities offered by Catalonia in an event which also closed a week of activities aimed at boosting trade relationships and collaborations between businesses in both countries.

Founded 24 years ago, the Wine & Business Club is a top-level business circle with 2500 members and 17 delegations in France, Monaco, Geneva and Luxembourg. The event, co-organised by Catalonia Trade & Investment and the Catalan Tourism Agency, saw the participation of the president of the Wine & Business Club, Alain Marty, and the French director of Catalonia Trade & Investment, Christophe Arnoul, among others.

Arnoul declared to the French business professionals, “Catalonia has become a pole of attraction for the international growth of French firms”. He emphasised that, “Between 2011 and 2016, France became the foreign country creating the most jobs in Catalonia”, giving as an example the establishment of the French tech company Criteo in Barcelona, which has created 250 jobs and is the company’s most important European hub after its head office in Paris. Arnoul also reminded the audience that France is the country with the most Catalan exports.

The event closed an intense promotional week for Catalonia in the Lyon region where, apart from its participation in the Wine & Business Club, it undertook a trade mission with 6 Catalan companies from the industrial subcontracting sector and had 9 Catalan companies participating in the Brokerage session of the IoT SIDO fair in Lyon.