Business Club Belgium Luxembourg (BCBL)
On October 17, 2018, the Business Club Belgium – Luxembourg (BCBL) organised its first delegation visit to Luxembourg, which focused, in the morning, on media and broadcasting at BCBL member company RTL Group, and in the afternoon, on the newly founded House of Startups which brings together actors of change: innovation hubs, accelerators, experts and corporates.
The nearly two dozen participants represented Member companies and Board Members of the Business Club, and the delegation was led by BCBL president Rik Vandenberghe, CEO of BESIX and BCBL Vice-president H.E. Mrs Arlette Conzemius, Luxembourg Ambassador to Belgium.
The program started at the headquarters of RTL Group with a visit by Christophe Goossens, CEO of RTL Luxembourg, of the new headquarter building in Kirchberg. With its 59 television channels, 31 radio stations and its numerous digital content and video companies, RTL Group is now one of the world's leading audiovisual broadcasters. The roots of the company’s history date back to 1924, the year when Radio Luxembourg first went on air. As a European pioneer, the company broadcast a unique program in several languages using the same frequency.
The Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce invited to a networking lunch in its premises where Director General and BCBL Vice-president, Carlo Thelen, talked about the Luxembourg business environment, the recent national elections and its possible coalition governments and what this might mean for the local businesses. The lunch was a great opportunity for the BCBL member companies to network amongst themselves and with members of the Union Royal Belge, represented by Randstad and Capital at Work.
During the afternoon, the participants were welcomed by Bastien Berg (House of Startups - HoST), Martin Guérin (Luxembourg City Incubator - LCI) and Alex Panican (Luxembourg House of Financial technologies - LHoFT). Ideally located in the heart of the city of Luxembourg, the HoST is a vibrant and diverse innovation community hosted on five floors and nearly 6,000 sqm. Five tenants are already in place. The largest, the LHoFT, is successfully driving technology innovation for Luxembourg’s financial services industry. It is joined by the LCI, active in urbantech, commerce, tourism, environment, logistics and construction/housing. The HoST is also home to Crédit Agricole’s first international incubator Hub@Luxembourg. All these incubators host both national and international startups.
BCBL member company Daanuu, housed at the HoST, talked about the experience of scaling their company within the supportive environment of these incubators.
The BCBL member companies that joined the visit included: Besix, Ernst & Young, Logit One, LuxTP, RTL Group, Daanuu and Willy Naessens.
The BCBL is the result of a joint initiative of the Embassy of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in Brussels and the Chamber of Commerce of Luxembourg and aims to promote trade between Belgium and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg by collecting companies of all sizes and various economic sectors within the same platform.
More information on http://www.bcbl.be/members/join-the-bcbl/
