"If I'm asked, I think the options between merging or not merging Puig Brands with the American Estée Lauder are at 50%.". This is the statement of a person who knows the negotiations between the two family beauty and fashion companies, which became known at the end of March. One of the points that makes it difficult to reach an agreement is the price of the Catalan group, which is worth around 10 billion euros, compared to Estée Lauder's 30 billion dollars (26 billion euros).

The European Union faces one of the most important economic debates of the coming years: should competition rules be relaxed to allow the creation of large European companies capable of competing with North American and Chinese giants? Or, before easing merger control, should Europe complete its single market?

Four and a half years ago, in December 2021, we talked about Gaspar Remisa, from Osona but based in Madrid, who pulled the strings of state finances during the first half of the 19th century. One of the figures he was often associated with was a French investor named José Buschental, who would also be a key figure in the Spanish Treasury of those times.

The Minister of Business and Labor, Miquel Sàmper, has established dual industry –with applications in the defense and civil spheres– as one of the levers to "generate a transformation of the current labor market", in the face of the employment regulation files (ERE) in Catalonia, such as those of Nestlé, Ficosa, and Nissan.employment regulation files (ERE) in Catalonia, such as those of Nestlé, Ficosa, and Nissan. According to Sàmper, "defense is one of the clearest examples to understand where we are."

The Catalan electric car charging system company Wallbox has signed an alliance with vehicle manufacturer Slate Auto, in which US magnate Jeff Bezos holds a stake. For now, it will supply chargers made in Barcelona for Slate Auto's facilities in Indiana, although the two companies "are exploring new collaboration opportunities," Wallbox reported in a statement this Thursday.

Sweden's prestige as a driver of the green industry in Europe suffered a very hard blow with the bankruptcy of Northvolt in the year 2025. The electric battery manufacturer could not live up to expectations and became the biggest industrial failure in the modern history of the Nordic country. A year later, another emblematic company of the green industrial revolution driven from northern Sweden has avoided a similar fate.

In full negotiations with Estée Lauder for a possible integration, Puig Brands, the Catalan fashion and beauty multinational, has announced its first-quarter results for this year, with sales of 1,215 million euros, an increase of 0.8%. The rise is 4.7% at constant perimeter and exchange rates. The company insists that "no definitive decision has been made" with the US firm, with whom talks were confirmed on March 23. It adds that "until an agreement is reached, it cannot be guaranteed that there may be a transaction nor its terms".

On December 16, 1877, an exceptional event occurred that placed Catalonia at the forefront of global technology. On that day, at the School of Industrial Engineers of Barcelona, the first telephony tests in the entire country and some of the first in the world were conducted.

The journalist, historian, and writer Jaume Clotet (Barcelona, 1974) grew up in a family of bankers – both his father and mother worked there –, but that world never appealed to him: “They had a good understanding of family economics, finance, investments, bonds, stocks... and I’ve been quite uninterested in that in life”. He did inherit the values of saving and prudence: “If my mother invested in the stock market, it was in very controlled and prudent things”, he explains in statements to Empreses.

The major distribution companies in Spain have warned that private consumption shows "slight signs of exhaustion" caused by the war in Iran, at the annual meeting that the entity grouping them (Aecoc) held this Tuesday in Barcelona. Domestic consumption and investment have marked the good performance of the Spanish economy once the pandemic hecatomb was overcome. Now, the president of Aecoc, José María Bonmatí, has assured that "we are still in very positive ratios", but has warned that "the consumer confidence index is not particularly sky-high". "Crises begin and end when the consumer perceives it that way," he recalled.

Puig Brands, the Catalan multinational family group for beauty and fashion, which is negotiating an integration with the American Estée Lauder, three times larger, brings to the table the process of ownership change of local companies that has been occurring over the last 20 years. This very week, the Japanese Marubeni Corporation has bought 85% of Factorenergia, founded in 1999 by Emili Rousaud, former candidate for the presidency of Barça, for 204 million euros. The ownership changes of Catalan companies have not stopped. Between 2005 and 2006, the sales of Panrico, by the Costafreda family, to the fund Apax Partners were closed; and that of Chupa Chups, founded by Enric Bernat in 1958, to the Italian Perfetti Van Melle. Bernat's heirs today operate Casa Batlló on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia, one of Antoni Gaudí's iconic buildings, which they bought in the 90s.

From Guitarland you can easily leave convinced that your life needs a guitar to acquire the full dimension of its meaning. Richard and José Luis have been running this shop on Carrer del Diluvi in Barcelona since 2003, right in the heart of Gràcia, a neighborhood that has been becoming orphaned of this type of establishment –contrary to its personality, with deep-rooted festivals and a tradition for musical taste– for a type of resident who is a very interesting potential customer for the services a music store can offer.

Since she was 15 years old, Xantal Llavina (1975) has been clear that she wants to be a journalist, but with a family of entrepreneurs, she opted to graduate in journalism and business: "I'm a humanities person and accounting was a bit complicated for me. In fact, I begged the teacher to average my grades with the theoretical exams because I would never be an accountant, only a journalist. A year later, when I was already on television, I ran into the teacher and she told me that I was right, that I wanted to be a journalist," she explains. Restless and hardworking, Llavina has ended up building a career that goes far beyond journalism.

Payment by large companies and administrations is not only not improving, but is getting worse. Last year, 85% of the largest companies exceeded the legal payment deadline between companies by seven days, reaching up to 67 days. And administrations more than doubled this, settling at 70 days, instead of the 30 established in the regulations, according to the Multisectorial Platform against Default (PMcM), which brings together one million companies and self-employed workers.

In a year like 2025, with record stock market gains, the main executives of the Ibex companies, the main benchmark of the Spanish equity market, overwhelmingly earned very significant incomes, further widening the gap with the average earnings of their staff. The link between remuneration and stock performance contributed to boosting the incomes of many senior executives. A clear example was Manuel Manrique, president of Sacyr, who topped the rankings by earning 32.6 million euros, 384.59% more than the previous year, thanks to a bonus for the company's stock market rise since the pandemic. As a consequence of this plan, this executive, one of the founders of Sacyr, multiplied his remuneration of around 6.7 million from 2022, 2023, and 2024. The fact is that Manrique's remuneration was 628 times the average earned by the company's staff, which is around 52,000 euros, according to the directors' remuneration report published by this company.

The Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF) has allocated 8 million euros to the new plant of the industrial boiler group Attsu, in Riudellots de la Selva. The company specializes in the design, manufacture, and commercialization of steam boilers, thermal oil, and other pressure vessels.

The industrial company internationalization agency, The Big Move, has signed up former Minister of Business and Labor, Roger Torrent, for its advisory board. Founded by Quico Ramió, this company works with industrial companies looking to grow internationally and reduce costs and risks. The company accompanies them throughout the process of opening new markets, from initial analysis to commercial activation, using a methodological framework that integrates analysis, definition, testing, and market development.

The relationship between the president of the Spanish employers' association Conpymes, José María Torres, and the Catalan Pimec, one of the founders of this organization, which was established in May 2021, is rapidly deteriorating. So much so that Pimec is considering promoting a split from this organization or achieving a change in the presidency, according to close sources. Torres, who headed the only candidacy for the presidency and renewal of the board in the electoral process that opened last October, has chosen to proclaim himself winner again during the organization's assembly held this Thursday in Madrid, with the majority of affiliated organizations against him.

The Catalan Finance Institute (ICF), the public bank of the Generalitat, has granted to date 846 loans to young people aged 18 to 35 to obtain the down payment for an apartment. The average granted is 36,332 euros and an average housing price of 189,908 euros with an average age of beneficiaries of 29.4 years, according to data presented by the Secretary General of Economy and President of the ICF's governing board, Juli Fernández, and the entity's CEO, Vanessa Servera.

The challenge isn't so much creating a company as making it last. The data reflects this. Around 100,000 companies are established in Catalonia each year (this figure includes everything from corporations to sole proprietorships and others), but only three are over 300 years old (Codorniu, which is no longer owned by the Raventós family; Raventós itself, which has other businesses in the sector; and the Publications of Montserrat Abbey). This data was presented by Oriol Amat, professor at Pompeu Fabra University-Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM) and director of the Family Business Observatory. Together with a colleague, Jordi Tarragona, Amat analyzed family-controlled companies and concluded that only 17% have a high level of professionalization. The experts based their findings on responses from 129 companies out of a sample of 1,200. And this refers to professionalization, understood as the opposite of improvisation, lack of systematization, or acting solely on intuition, which is key to business survival, according to these researchers. The fact that survival is a challenge is demonstrated by the fact that only 30% of companies reach the second generation and only 13% the third.