SURVIVAL as a large business in today's global marketplace required the strengths of a small company combined with the benefits which come from having the size of an international concern, the chairman of Unilever said yesterday.

Mr Niall FitzGerald was addressing the annual president's dinner at the UCD Graduate School of Business in Dublin.

He said that large companies must "try and find ways to retain all the values, beliefs and cultures of small businesses, while they extract all the leverage from their scale, scope and international reach".

They must keep "the small company soul" in the large company body, he said.

Mr Fitzgerald said 40 per cent of the companies which made up the FT-SE 100 in 1970 no longer existed as independent entities.

The strengths that large corporations could take from small businesses include "clarity of purpose, interdependence, a rapid and continuous flow of information, and the entrepreneurial spirit that is crucial to success

"It's about a can-do culture where people don't wait to be told; it's about risk-taking and constant learning; it's about creativity, imagination and looking for the new or unusual angle, and it's about culture which celebrates success, is self-confident and secure, but with a passion to excel and find better ways."

Unilever had been founded by William Hesketh Lever, who took all the attributes of a small company and developed them into what was Unilever today, Mr Fitzgerald said.

"People want to feel part of something worthwhile and are increasingly sceptical of the ability of large institutions to provide this, but it can be done," he said.