As you probably already noticed DCCC Shanghai (East China Chapter) held the AGM (Annual General Meeting) on 21st of March at the Radisson Blue in Peoples Square, Shanghai. So this newsletter will be a little longer than the normal ones.

It was a very good evening with many participants and 48% of the corporate members were represented (either physically or by Proxies). During the AGM the Board informed and updated the members about the achievements of 2018 as well the goals for 2019. Furthermore the members approved the accounts for 2018 and the budget for 2019.

The participants to the AGM could listen to the presentations by the Consul General of Denmark in Shanghai, Jakob Linulf; Member of “The China Commission” & President of Danfoss China, Kjeld Stærk; Chairman of DCCC-Shanghai, Poul G. Kristensen and the Treasure of DCCC-Shanghai, Niels Roed.

According to DCCC-Shanghai’s Bylaws that can be max 15 board members including the YP-representative (that is elected by the Young Professionals). The Danish General Consul in Shanghai (Jakob Linulf) is an Honorary Board member and is not counted among the 15 seats.

As it is tradition in the DCCC East China Chapter, all the members of the Board need to be elected or re-elected during the AGM. All the nominated board members were elected by the AGM (only corporate members can vote). Then the Board decided the constituency of the different roles for the 2019 board.

Actually the DCCC-Shanghai’s Bylaws state that the Chairman will normally have the seat for max two periods and can only be re-elected as Chairman for longer time, if the re-election is supported unanimous (100%) by the board members. Therefore I want to thanks all the board members for their trust and support! Furthermore it’s very important to remember that all the board members do a great job for DCCC-Shanghai for free. So thanks very much to all them!

I am quite sure that the new board will have a great year ahead and achieve many new goals for all our members.

Now I will try to share with you a little about what happened last year:

2018 was a very dynamic year for DCCC-Shanghai. In continuation of what we started in 2017, the board continued working with the different committees created to help understand the needs and wishes of our members as well to help DCCC-Shanghai to work more optimal.

These committees are: Legalization Committee, Company Committee, Repatriation Committee, Office Committee and Vision & Strategy Committee. The different committees are constituted by members of the board that are willing to use extra time to work helping DCCC-Shanghai to find the most optimal solutions to for the different needs. These groups consist normally of 3 to 5 board members. They will normally hold extra meetings to investigate, collect information (if necessary collect quotations) & discuss the different options for finally present a proposal for the Board for approval.

I will say that it has been a hard way, but very successful. So I want to use this opportunity to thanks all these members for their participation, inputs and efforts to make it happen!

Since I mentioned the different committees, I will use a little of time to explain what they do / did:

The Legalization Committee was quite busy investigating all the possible options, to ensure a legal existence of DCCC-Shanghai. There were many options with their own pros & cons. But finally after many month investigations and more meetings, the committee suggested the Board to register a company. So DCCC-Shanghai started the registration process in August 2018 together with XingSen that is a company with experience in this field as well doing accounting. Finally Shanghai Danish Chamber of Commerce Co. Ltd. (上海上丹企业管理咨询有限公司) was registered and started operating from the 1st of January 2019.
The operating scope of the registered company is Events arrangement & consultancy.

After registering the company the Legalization Committee was closed down and its responsibilities were transferred to the Company Committee. As a part of the service agreement with XingSen they help us doing the accounting, so we can fulfill all the requirements expected from a registered company. Furthermore they also help us printing invoices to our members. So now we can provide our own invoices and that cost 3% of the amount invoiced.

During the company registration and opening of new bank accounts we stopped using the old bank, WeChat & Alipay accounts in January this year. I am aware that this generated some confusion among our members and I will use this opportunity to apologize for it. Actually we are still in the process to register a company WeChat account, but that takes longer time that expected.

It is for us very important to stress that the company registration was necessary to become legal, but DCCC-Shanghai is still a NON Profit organization and its goals are unchanged!

The Company Committee consists of 5 members that represent the whole board in the operational decisions of the registered company. They are also the ones presenting the Board with the status of how the company is running.

The Repatriation Committee helps DCCC-Shanghai to keep updated about the different laws & regulations being implemented in DK that in one way or another affect our members and their families. So we cooperate with Danes Worldwide and other organizations that normally will be involved in this process. As you know that happens often in connection with election times, so last year the activity level of this committee has being lower or more relax.

The Office Committee consists of 3 members and as its name says takes care of the decisions related to the office employees, location, purchase of equipment etc. This committee will also control the fulfillment of KPIs and approve salary increase, bonus etc.

The Vision & Strategy Committee has also been working very hard and presenting its proposal to the Board on 30th of November 2018. The suggested proposal was approve with 100% of votes and become the new way of running DCCC-Shanghai.

We want that DCCC-Shanghai is considered the preeminent & natural platform for business and social networking for the Danish Community in East China. You can say a kind of umbrella that link all the other groups & offers together. So when people move to East China or Shanghai, they will know that they can find everything through DCCC-Shanghai.

DCCC-Shanghai will focus on 3 areas: Business Networking Platform, Knowledge Sharing & Social Platform and finally Collaborate with other organizations.

When we transfer the strategy and vision onto activities & actions we will see many new options under the different areas. In general their scope will be:

The idea is to ensure that our activities reflect what DCCC-Shanghai stands for & represent for our members. So among other things we will be seen more working groups that will arrange their own activities under the DCCC-Shanghai platform and so on. As you all can imagine this is a long process and we need to find the best way of implementing it. The idea is also to have a more structured way of organizing the different events and activities to optimize our resources and efforts.

During 2018 we continued our co-operation with DCCC (Beijing – North China) & DCC-SC (South China) through the PAN China agreement, that I have been the Chairman for until March. From April on the Chairman of PAN China will be one of the two other Chairmen for one year period and rotate again after one year.

We hold at least 2 meetings per year and 6 Skype-meetings to keep updated about each other’s activities as well try to keep a common strategy & approach to other organizations, government etc. We joined forces for different approaches in favor of our members as well joined each other’s events. For example both North China & South China were represented at our BPOY event.

The 14th of January 2019, we held the first Board Meeting of the year and we went through the P/L & cost of running the DCCC-Shanghai’s office in 2018 as well the budget for 2019. In this connection the board realized that the expected cost for 2019 was too high and it will generate big losses, so the Board decided to reduce one position in the office management team. This decision was also possible because among other things all accounting activities were already outsourced to XingSen. As a consequence of that DCCC-Shanghai stopped the co-operation with Maria Olivia Castro Grimnitz. We thank Maria for her time and dedication with DCCC-Shanghai.

Many of you have already realized that Laura Li (our former Event Manager) became the GM of DCCC-Shanghai and she is doing a great job. We thank Laura for taking this opportunity and managing the new DCCC-Shanghai’s office!

DCCC-Shanghai exist for and because of the members, therefore we want to thanks you all for your support! Without your support, contributions and participation it will not be any DCCC-Shanghai. Remember to follow our activities in our homepage as well through WeChat. You can also follow DCCC Beijing & DCC-SC, and if you decide to participate at theirs events, you will just pay the normal member fee.

Emerging Leaders Training 2019

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We are currently experiencing a large number of inquiries from members, who are experiencing difficulties in retaining their banking contacts in Denmark. Members are often complaining about not being allowed to open new accounts or sometimes even retain old ones in Danish banks, as long as the account holder is not domiciled in Denmark. Most cite rigid risk assessment procedures as the main reasoning.

Banks often point toward anti-laundry or anti-terror regulations as main reasons behind harsher risk assessments. Danes Worldwide is currently in contact with some of the key stakeholders in this matter, in an attempt to find a more well-balanced solution, where legal obligations can be met without compromising healthy business relations between Danes abroad and financial institutes in Denmark.

In this regard, we are currently assembling accounts from Danes abroad, who have recently experienced difficulties in either establishing new bank connections in Denmark or retaining old ones. Feel free to share your story with Danes Worldwide by sending an email to jura@danes.dk.

Annual General Meeting on the 21st of March

(Photo by Gangfeng Wang)

Denmark-China Economic Diplomacy by Ambassador on the 27th of March

(Photos by Kristoffer Toftgaard Nielsen )

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Corporate Member:

Apr 9                         Expatriates’ Work Permit and Residence Permit Application in Suzhou
Apr 17                       Culture & Communication Management –
Working Effectively: Focus on Nordic Cultures
Apr 18                       Using AI for Market Research for Consumer Companies
Apr 20                       Danish Easter Lunch
Apr 24                       Eat Well and Train Well
May 15                      Leading Successfully in Uncertain Times
May 17                      Danish Friday
May 22                      Culture & Communication Management –
Cross Cultural Communication
May 22                      InterChamber Mixer in Suzhou

To sign up for any of the above events please go to our home page: http://dccc-shanghai.com/events/

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