SE, for ‘Societas Europaea,’ is the newest corporate form

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Brussels, Belgium: Forget PLC, SA and all the other little letters attached to corporate names that reflect their nationality. From Friday, European companies will, theoretically at least, be able to register as European entities and add the letters SE, or Societas Europaea in Latin, to their names.

But after 30 years of discussing the idea and three years after European governments signed on to the SE idea, only a small handful of countries — six out of 25 — have actually passed the required laws to make the idea of a truly European company a reality.

“Tomorrow is important,” insisted Peter Schutze, a board member at the Scandinavian banking group Nordea, the company most advanced on the road to becoming an SE. “It would be wrong to call this a false dawn. The politicians had to set a date. Now what is needed to pressure on countries to follow up.”

The other eight are steel maker Arcelor of Luxembourg; the aerospace group the European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co., known as EADS; the phone company Telia Sonera; the construction company Brenner Basistunnel, based in Bolzano, Italy; Euro-tunnel, based in Britain; the banking insurance group Fort-is, headquartered in Brussels; the Swedish Bank SEB, and the Finnish technology company Elcoteq Network Corp.

Nordea, formed in 2000 in a merger of banks in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark, decided to pursue SE status last year and hopes to complete its registration around the end of next year. Elcoteq is understood to be on the point of making a similar commitment, although no one at the technology company was available to comment.

When the politicians agreed to the idea of a European company statute three years ago they said the move would save companies doing business across national borders billions of euros in administrative costs. “The European compa-ny statute will enable companies to expand and restructure their cross-border operations without the costly and time-consuming red tape of having to set up a network of subsidiaries,” said Frits Bolkeste-in, the European commissioner in charge of forging a single European market, when the agreement was reached.

He also said the new company statute would encourage companies to exploit cross-border opportunities and so boost Europe’s competitiveness on the global stage.