Tuesday, June 27, 2006

EBG Dinner for NASDAQ'S Charlotte Crosswell

In the midst of World Cup fever (the France-Spain game was on-going), EBG organized a dinner in honor of Charlotte Crosswell, Head of NASDAQ International, at the Meurice Hotel in Paris.

We exchanged thoughts on startups in Europe and in the US, the Euronext/NYSE attempted merger, electronic trading vs. float... But conversations mostly revolved around Israel, India and China as the most dynamic sources of NASDAQ IPO-bound companies in the near future. Israel companies already account for 27% of NASDAQ's listings.

Interesting footnote: Ms. Crosswell believes Chinese companies will be much more powerful on a global level rather than on a local level (although this local market is plenty already...), thanks to the next wave (think 15 years as of today) of Chinese CEOs, who will be fluent in English, vs. current managers who REALLY don't speak it.

French VCs, brokers, CFOs, and entrepreneurs were there. To name a few (those who were on my side of the table, actually): Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz, CEO of vpod.tv, Jocelyne Gerault, CFO of KXEN, Bruno Rivet, Director of Participations at SPEF Venture (NATEXIS)...

Pierre Reboul and Philippe Rodriguez from EBG were here too of course.

Here's my poor mobile phone picture report of the event:

 
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