[:en]- ECCO’s Symposium #11[:]

During the last ECCO symposium in London, Institutions & Strategies had the opportunity to investigate and develop long term strategic relationships with some delegates from several countries. Within this framework, we initiated a dialog with the director of the trade and Industry Department of South Africa Willian Ramutla (cf picture), on the matter of economic growth and business opportunities in the country.

ECCO’s Symposium #11 took place in DLA Piper’s splendid London offices on 18 & 19 November 2015. The event started with a keynote of Lord Howe, the Minister of State in the UK Ministry of Defence and Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, invited to keynote the symposium. Sir Nigel Knowles the Global Co-Chairman of DLA Piper also stepped on stage to welcome 114 delegates from 15 countries.

On the first day, representatives of offset authorities from South Africa, South Korea, Malaysia and the UAE gave a rundown on the modifications made to offset regulations in their countries. They also gave a very useful reminder of the different steps an offset application needs to go through between submission and final acceptance.

To wrap up the forum, two speakers talked about their extensive experience in Saudi Arabia and a member of the Australian MoD spoke about the Australian Defence Capability Acquisition Reform.

On Day 2, the whole room plunged into a business case involving a fictious country seeking to acquire 100 aircraft and demanding offsets worth 100% of the total main contract amount with 50% direct and 50% indirect. Fake multinational AIBOS, the vendor, needed help in understanding the key issues raised by offsets.

Ten offset specialists shared their expertise in various domains such as transfer of technology, localisation, indirect offset, compliance, national security, training, finance, corruption and corporate law in order to bring negotiations to a successful conclusion and of course ensure effective performance of the offset obligation.