70th anniversary today and the new m. p. was juha sipila, who forming a new government today. the agenda has developed but not fundamentally changed. we have three major tasks. 1. we need to restore cost competitiveness of our economy. this is the pre - condition to create growth and jobs. social partners. 2. we need to make structural reforms to promote growth and improve possibilities to create jobs. here the new government needs to move fast with decisions and their implementation. 3. we need to consolidate our public finances. we cannot move a growing debt burden to our children and grand - children. here we need a strong government and functioning relations between social partners. today i want to congratulate oras for its 70 - year history. i want to extend my congratulations to all in the company, the employees, the management, and the owners. the success has required major efforts for a long time from all of them. thank you! bis central bankers ’ speeches

i remember, how big a role was given to design. i am happy to hear that jorma vennola, the designer whose style we all know, is here with us. and fourthly, an important focus of oras was on internationalization. all in all, it was also important to learn that a family company can grow fast when it is growthand innovation - oriented and profits are retained in the company to finance growth. generally, the sentiment in finland was gradually turning more international in the 1980s. the finnish companies started to go international not only by establishing new sales units, also by making acquisitions to enlarge their market shares. a number of family - owned companies followed this path. oras was among them. it was not possible to maintain the high pace of growth by a company mainly based in finnish markets. they had to seek growth from abroad. also the drivers for economic growth were changing in the 1980s : according to professor matti pohjola, up until the mid - seventies investment of physical capital was the main driver of productivity and growth in finland. it was only from the end of 1970s onwards, when human capital, like investments in education and r & d started to dominate. one of the trends of the late 1970s and the early 1980s was that the baby boomers were increasingly entering the top positions in business and politics. in oras, the new generation was also taking the lead, as pekka paasikivi was nominated as the new ceo of oras in 1979. bis central bankers ’ speeches 1990s in summer 1990 i moved with my family moved to brussels. when we arrived at zaventem airport, we were welcome by oras faucets in the toilets. later i went to see a football match in anderlecht. in the stadium we saw a small billboard of oras : the red color and a faucet was easy to recognize. later we understood that to win market shares was not as easy. when we left brussels in 2004, the faucets were in the news. the cartel case on faucet market had just been opened. oras was not part of the cartel of a number of european companies. they were severely fined by the european commission a few years later. the domestic depression of the 1990s was deep in finland. high interest rates and the later devaluations of markka hit many companies and bankruptcies went up. the collapse of trade with the soviet union had its important role.