Dr Holger Otte,
Mr van Roekel,

Mr Hans-Heinrich Otte,

First Vice President of the HH Parlament,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

There is a Chinese saying that, as long as reliability will reign, everything can be kept under control.”

Although this wise saying originally referred to states, it can no doubt be applied equally well to the economy. If people can rely on their partners, they are in a position to survive serious economic crises too.

Reliability and trust are essential first principles for auditors and tax consultants in general and for accountancy services firm BDO AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft in particular. You have defined your corporate values as continuity, reliability, passion and independence.

Continuity in long-established working relationships with clients, and in the determination not to be distracted by fleeting trends but to focus permanently on the long-term prospects of the companies for whom you are acting.

And a close companion of continuity is reliability, that has to stand the test of day to day business.

But there is more to it than that. Because these attributes usually best realize their potential in existing relationships with customers. New clients, however, have to be convinced of the services offered, and that happens when people pursue their profession with passion. Business and politics are much alike in this respect.

The same is true of independence, because this quality alone leads to an objective assessment. This is achieved by taking both current successes and future developments into account - and so we come full circle back to continuity.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Allow me to pick up that word continuity again because strictly speaking, BDO’s continuous presence in Hamburg is not 50, but 93 years old. I should like, if I may, to reveal something about the specifically German history of the BDO network.

Back in 1920 businessmen from Hamburg and Berlin founded the trust company Deutsche Warentreuhand Aktiengesellschaft. The driving forces were Jewish bankers Max Warburg and Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartoldy. In his day, Warburg was one of Hamburg’s most respected bankers and, in this function, he was also party to the rise of another Hamburg institution, the shipping line called Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft, now HAPAG-Lloyd. And it is no coincidence that during this time the Warburg bank was hailed as the most fortunate and successful embodiment of the Hanseatic mercantile spirit.

The business of providing surety for international loans was soon complemented by auditing at the time still a very young profession. There was no general obligation to have accounts audited until the Regulation concerning Securities, Banking Supervision and Tax Amnesty” was passed. Therefore, the 19th of September 1931 usually counts as the date on which the auditing profession was born - only to be brought to heel shortly afterwards as part of the German Federation of National Socialist Lawyers. Thanks to his good connections, Max Warburg was initially able to help numerous fellow Jews to emigrate, before he too was forced to leave Hamburg in 1938.

After the Second World War, in particular following its launch on the international market in 1958, the company began a new chapter in its success story”, which bears the unmistakable stamp of the current honorary chairman, Hans-Heinrich Otte. Even 50 years ago, it was clear to him that when companies operate globally, they also need partners who operate globally. In those days, it wasn’t yet called globalization. No wonder that Hans-Heinrich Otte is regarded as the trailblazer and pioneer of the modern auditing firm in Germany. Today BDO is one of the five global players on the international accountancy services stage.

By the way: Hans-Heinrich Otte also played top-level football for VfB Lübeck way back in the late 1940ies which people remember even in Hamburg!

In additional to the corporate values already mentioned, BDO’s success is founded on two pronounced characteristics: one is - despite global reach - the strict emphasis on local and regional structures within the network, whose individual members have preserved their independence. The other is the focus on specific business needs which allows BDO to offer special solutions for practically every market.

One good example from Germany is the intercultural approach adopted by the China Desk, which assists German companies in their Chinese activities and Chinese companies operating in Germany. That is very important to us in Hamburg: China is the Port of Hamburg’s major trading partner, accounting for 33 per cent of total shipments; over 900 Hamburg-based companies trade with China. Since 2004 BDO has helped to underline this fruitful connection by sponsoring the Hamburg Summit: China meets Europe”.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am sure you will forgive me for having started this appreciation of the BDO network by looking at it from a German perspective - although I am fully aware that the international network with members in more than 140 countries has so many more different aspects.

When viewing BDO as a global player, one aspect is especially noticeable: BDO is the only one of the large auditing and accounting services with a Mittelstand” bias. The enterprise focusses on the mid-sized and family companies known in Germany as the Mittelstand.

And this bias towards the Mittelstand, combined with an international network, is one of the features that guarantee BDO’s business success. You are close to the customer, and your flexible, tailor-made services prove you know what clients who run mid-sized companies want - the ideal way to ensure that BDO can maintain and assert its market position, despite the general tendency to merge and consolidate demonstrated by the industry’s few really big companies.

The situation in Hamburg illustrates the importance of the Mittelstand, because well-run mid-sized enterprises are the backbone of our city’s economy and reliable providers of jobs. Of the roughly 125,000 commercial and industrial enterprises in Hamburg, four fifths belong to the Mittelstand. Likewise a good 80 per cent of people working in jobs for which statutory social security contributions are due, are on the payroll of mid-sized companies.

No further comment is necessary to explain what these figures mean for our city. We have committed our fortunes to a business model with a future.

It is no coincidence that the word Mittelstand” has now found its way into both English and Spanish. The Wall Street Journal” described the Mittelstand as the engine of growth in Germany and essentially attributes the success of the German economy in weathering the crisis to the strength of its Mittelstand.

These mid-sized companies thus show the world a successful business model and also act as an indicator when a crisis is brewing. Because if the Mittelstand breaks down, society’s structures and financial patterns begin to wobble.

To ensure that Hamburg remains a dynamic location and can continue to occupy an excellent position in the face of global competition, the commitment and enthusiasm of people running mid-sized companies is more important than ever.

With this in mind we offer ongoing support to companies based in the city through schemes such as the Alliance for the Mittelstand”, which was set up early this year, and is complemented by the Innovation Alliance for Hamburg”, which has promoted research and development since 2008, thereby offering smaller companies an opportunity to develop their innovation potential as fully as possible.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
In the face of global competition, Hamburg has carved out an exceptionally stable position with superb prospects for the future. For more than a decade, comparisons of business growth in the states that make up the German Federation have placed our city at or near the top; again in 2012, despite a slight cooling of the economy, Hamburg reported above-average growth of 1.2 per cent.

Hamburg is one of the largest industrial locations and cargo handling centres in Europe and the city drives North Germany’s economy - it acts
as a beacon for all of Northern Europe and beyond.

This economic region is marked by a great ability to adapt to international competition, by innovative and competitive products, highly qualified workers, an innovative research culture and, last but not least, well developed infrastructure.

Hamburg Port takes pride of place in this context - according to current figures it handles more than 130 million tonnes of cargo a year and is the second largest container port in Europe.

But the best port is no use without good hinterland transportation. We are therefore continuously upgrading and optimizing Hamburg’s heavily used traffic infrastructure. Already more travellers and visitors pass through Hamburg main station every day than through any other passenger station in Germany.

The Senate of Hamburg is concerned to secure the city’s competitiveness and powers of innovation by pursuing sustainable economic policies that focus on clusters. In 1997 Hamburg was one of the first states to launch a cluster policy and at first its Hamburg@work” initiative was greeted with a certain amount of scepticism.

Now the various clusters - aviation, logistics, life sciences and healthcare, maritime industry and renewable energies - are indispensable forces sparking innovation and growth in our city and lending Hamburg a distinctive skills profile.

Let us take our cutting edge cluster, Hamburg Aviation, as an example: companies such as Airbus and Lufthansa-Technik make the metropolitan region one of the three greatest centres of civil aviation in the world. Or let’s take the renewable energy sector. Hamburg - in close cooperation with the states of North Germany - has become the wind power industry’s leading centre. Not to forget healthcare and life sciences, two markets that are set to grow in future.

The avowed aim of our economic policy is to develop Hamburg into Europe’s Capital of Innovation by 2020. In the years to come, the ability to innovate will determine economic success and, in the long-term, secure the creation of wealth and keep jobs in the city. Ultimately, however, innovation is successful only if the business and academic communities coordinate efforts and enter into an exchange.

We are working hard to promote this exchange in areas such as fuel cell and wind power technology, lasers, nanotechnology and marine engineering. One fact that reveals how seriously we take our ambition to become Europe’s Capital of Innovation in 2020 is our decision to spend a larger proportion of the total budget on research and science - raising the total from 870 million to about a billion euros by 2020.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Hamburg has a strong economy and its excellent business climate is geared to the future.

So Hamburg is obviously an interesting location for the entire sector of services-to-business providers, such as consultants, accountants, auditors and tax advisers.

Measured by the number of accountancy and auditing companies and their branches, Hamburg is one of the top five states in the German Federation, and a company such as BDO is most welcome in our city.

I imagine that your board member Christian Dyckerhoff knows particularly well why Hamburg and BDO AG are so well-matched: Mr Dyckerhoff is also on the board of the Assembly of Honourable Merchants in Hamburg”.

The traditional view of the honourable merchant” originated in the self-image of the traders in the Hanseatic League and their aspiration to be both fair and reliable partners in trade and to live an honourable life, in other words, to be trustworthy.

BDO AG has been a trustworthy partner for Hamburg’s business world for more than 90 years - now more than ever in view of the criticism directed at accountancy firms connected with the financial scandals and company failures of the recent past. The general public quite rightly considers the job of the auditor, above all the audits they conduct, to be very important.

By performing this task reliably, the profession makes an important contribution to the smooth running of the economy.

Dr. Otte, two years ago a newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, quoted you as follows: We aren’t a business - we’re auditors. We perform a task that is in the public interest, and everything we do is subordinate to that interest.”

I am delighted that we have a company like BDO AG in Hamburg. On behalf of the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, I congratulate the international network on this anniversary and wish you every success in the future.

Es gilt das gesprochene Wort.