ZF publishes on Tuesday the sixth edition of the “Who’s Who in Business – 1,000 leading people in business”, a 150-page report that presents the most powerful managers and entrepreneurs in the Romanian economy.
“The report presents up-to-date information on leading business people. It is a useful instrument in the business world, which can be used by headhunters through to the sales department,” believes Sergiu Negut, partner with Wanted Transformation consultancy.
The 2013 edition of the report shows that in the past year companies have showed signs of stabilization, especially in terms of their management teams: fewer than 150 top executives have been “new entries” in 2013 edition as opposed to previous years, when over 200 top managers changed jobs every year.
“Very good managers are few and very difficult to relocate at present. Those who are very good are kept through various retention methods, from coaching programs to financial instruments that ‘tie’ them to the employer. As a headhunter, if you don’t contact a good candidate when they are unhappy with something in the company for which they work, you run the risk of ‘losing’ them for the next five years,” says a headhunter who wants to remain anonymous.
A quarter of the leading executives in Romanian companies are expats, similar to the percentage recorded in previous years and there are several explanations for this.
Changing a manager before the end of their term entails additional costs, such as the exit package. And sometimes foreign companies do not trust Romanian managers or have not found the right ones to run local operations.
“We expected the share of foreigners to dwindle, considering that some of the multinationals decide to cut their exposure to the Romanian market. But at the same time new foreign companies emerge, who are willing to invest in sectors such as industrial production and IT&C, so a balance is reached and this also shows in the economy’s stability,” Negut also says.
Banca Transilvania, P&G and Lafarge are just a few of the companies who changed their management in the past year and the professional career of the new managers, as well as information on their age and education, features in the yearbook.
One of the executives brave enough to change his sector of activity is Adrian Purcarea, who for over seven years ran the local subsidiary of IT Freescale Semiconductor, a former Motorola division. This summer he became manager of private medical operator Medicover.
In turn, Traian Simion, who was general manager of dairy producer Albalact, took over at the helm of PVC profile maker Teraplast Bistrita since the beginning of this year.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)