Hardly anyone turned up at the press conference in Milan a month ago to hear Michael Diekmann, chief executive of Allianz. The subject matter seemed to have put people off: Allianz, a German insurance group, was to change its statutes to become a “European company”, or Societas Europaea, using legislation passed by technocrats at the European Commission.
Yet the event was portentous. Allianz’s change from an Aktiengesellschaft, or AG – Germany’s version of a publicly incorporated company – into an SE is potentially far-reaching and could set an important precedent for peers. For the first time a big blue chip company was thinking of casting off its national identity and rebranding itself as a European entity, governed by corporate statutes common to the European Union’s 25 member states.
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