CORPORATIONS: Major multinational groups have restored profitability

Although the major corporations active in the international market of thermal insulating joinery recorded mixed results in 2013, mostly in line with the initial forecasts, these have also overcome the turning point of last year and managed to restore profitability in the context in which the recession from the Eurozone seems to be over. Thus, although in terms of turnover, the latter has declined in some segments, in terms of profitability the most specialized holdings showed more or less significant gains in almost all cases. Consequently, during the last year, the managers of specialized multinational groups have demonstrated once again that they had the ability to prevent the effects of the economic crisis. However, they are still cautious and argue that, during 2014, there will be implemented new measures in order to strengthen the position they hold in a business environment characterized by a certain difficulty. As it was shown in a previous analysis based on the current indicators, the first part of this year and, obviously, the entire 12 months of 2014 represent a relatively uncertain period, marked by severe social and political problems, especially within Eastern Europe (for example, the crisis in Ukraine), which may have unpredictable effects on the entire mainland economy. However, without attempting to accomplish an exhaustive analysis of the currently tense situations, related to the redrawing of geopolitical issues, a real influential factor - for the entire business environment - is revealed by the information offered by the European statistics office - Eurostat. These reflect the fact that, during the fourth quarter of 2013, the whole Euro area (EU-18) continued to stabilize after it came out from a technical recession in the July-September period of last year, although this trend was, in fact, observed in all the European Union (EU-28). However, for large corporations from the insulating market - and not only - some countries from Western Europe have become simply unattractive and these began to focus on emerging areas (more profitable) in the east and center of the continent, where the consumption of the joinery materials began to be more consistent after the ending of austerity programs undertaken by the authorities.