21st November 2022
9:00-13:15 CET
Hybrid format (WKO Conference Center, Wiedner Hauptstraße 63, 1040 Vienna, + Online)
Status: 14.11.2022
After the omicron wave eventually began to wane, the further Russian military invasion of Ukraine in February shocked Europe and the world and caused new turbulences for firms. The Western governments answered with an unprecedented salvo of economic sanctions directed at Russian institutions and firms but also crippling the business of Western firms active in Russia. Firms invested in those countries faced the question of production stops, suspensions of operations or even exiting the Russian market. And trade with the Ukraine and Russia crashed too.
The uncertainty about the escalation of the war, the expansion of the conflict to EU countries and the threat of discontinued energy supplies to Europe have heavily tarnished the investment attractiveness of the CEE region. Not to forget the ongoing disruptions of global supply chains, inflationary pressures unseen for decades and shortages of labor and skills in many sectors that have plagued businesses throughout the region.
At the same time, the EU is pushing the important green and digital transformation of the member states that just gathered momentum with the roll out of the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility. This raises the question if the war in Ukraine with its massive impact on European energy supplies and security is accelerating or reversing the development towards green energy.
The focus of the Congress is on how Western multinational firms have been coping with this complexity of challenges. Many pressing operational issues have to be handled together with questions on fundamental strategic reorientations. These debates in the corporate groups and with the diverse stakeholders are mostly controversial and good solutions are hard to achieve.
The 13th Grow East Congress invites executives, entrepreneurs, experts and academics to discuss the impact of those developments on the CEE economies, their investment attractiveness and the reaction of multinational firms on the situation.
- What are the effects of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia on the economies in the region?
- How are Western multinationals active in the region affected and how do they respond to this multitude of challenges?
- What is the outlook for the CEE region given the manifold direct and indirect effects of the war in Ukraine on economies, supply chains and markets? What are the plans for rebuilding Ukraine?
