According to European top managers Germany is next to China and together with Switzerland the most competitive country in the world. This finding was revealed through a survey carried out in the course of the “Handelsblatt Business-Monitor International“among top managers from six European countries.
About 1200 people took part in this survey which was carried out by the Droege & Comp consulting firm on behalf of the Handelsblatt magazine. Of these 59% assessed the competitiveness of Germany to be “very good” or “good”. Back in 2003 just 13% of respondents held this opinion.
Mr. Bert Rürup, who is chairman of the Sachverständigenrat (expert commission), thinks that this enormous improvement of Germany´s reputation is in particular due to new organizational structures of German companies and moderate wage claims on the part of unions.
Another phenomenon is considered by Mr. Rürup to send out a positive signal: for the first time the most important German companies listed on the stock exchange are owned through majority share holdings by foreign investors. According to Rürup, this proved that these companies are considered to be particularly competitive on world markets. It also demonstrated, however, a global lacking confidence in a weak dollar. 