The American investment guru Warren Buffett announced last month that he was setting his sights on private companies in Europe. He is interested in meeting the owners of Europe’s top private companies, and in particular family-owned firms worth more than $10 billion (€6.5 billion).

However, despite their increasing importance, as highlighted in the article above, there is no obvious regular meeting place for the owners and directors of Europe’s leading private companies. At Fast Track we propose to fill this gap.

After seven years of successfully bringing together the owners of Britain’s top private companies at our series of annual dinners, we now plan to expand into the Continent with an annual Davos-style forum and dinner. We also plan to publish – with a pan-European newspaper and television partner – an annual ranking of the biggest private companies with revenues of more than €1 billion, similar to Forbes’s listing of America’s largest private companies with revenues of more than $1 billion.

The World Economic Forum in Davos has been a huge success. However, its agenda focuses less on the world of privately-owned companies and more on the role of quoted multinationals, governments and Hollywood. It is interesting to note that Sir Richard Branson was one of the few private-company bosses to attend last year’s Davos gathering.

We propose to correct this oversight and to create something that attracts the bosses of the top private companies. We propose to hold an annual gathering in Geneva or Gstaad. It will provide a place for private-company owners from across Europe to meet, exchange ideas, and even do deals. The forum and dinner will be by invitation only and we aim to attract high-profile speakers relevant to private companies from a cross section of industries.

It remains to be seen whether we will attract these private and often publicity-shy bosses, particularly from established family dynasties. However, we will do our best to attract the leading companies and will ensure that they benefit from attending and networking. With the help of our sponsors in Britain, we have come a long way over the past seven years, and now get the bosses of most of the top 100 companies to attend our annual dinners.

We are now looking for suitable sponsors who are interested in helping to champion the role of private companies across Europe to help make our European vision a reality.

This reality will hopefully become a fixed date in the private-company calendar, and a privileged club for the owners of Europe’s top private companies that Buffett would be pleased to dine with, and at which he would, of course, be most welcome.

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