Whether promoted from within their organizations as a result of succession plans (Rompetrol Downstream, Carrefour, Metro, JTI, Tenaris Silcotub, Tiriac Holdings), recruited from companies in the same business (Cosmote & Romtelecom and Rewe) or appointed as part of the “Private sector CEO for state-owned companies” project (Nuclearelectrica, Romgaz), the executives appointed this year have to generate results for their shareholders or else risk having their terms ended early.
ZF has put together a ranking of the 15 most important top management changes in local companies in 2013, taking into account the size of the business they run (the 2012 revenue as shown in their filings with the Finance Ministry). The revenue of these businesses exceeded EUR10 billion in 2012.
1. Sorin Nichita
General manager of Rompetrol Downstream, a company with EUR1.8 billion revenue in 2012.
He has been running Rompetrol Downstream since February 2013, after having run Rompetrol Gas for a year. A graduate of the Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Nichita also has an Executive MBA from the ASEBUSS business school.
Has been working for Rompetrol since 2005 and his positions in the company include general manager of the Bulgarian and Georgian branches. Before joining Rompetrol, he had worked for Societatea Nationala de Radiocomunicatii (National Radio-communications Company) Radiocom for three years.
2. Jean Baptiste Dernoncourt
General manager of Carrefour Romania, a company with EUR1.1 billion revenue in 2012. The 32-year old Dernoncourt got this position at the end of November, replacing Francois Melchior de Polignac, who left the company this summer after less than two years and a half on the job.
Dernoncourt came in Romania almost two years ago to work as chief financial officer for Carrefour. He had previously worked for the company in France and China and before that, he had been senior auditor for audit and tax advisory firm Deloitte.
3. Gilles Roudy
Chief executive officer of Metro Cash&Carry (EUR1 billion sales in 2012), he was appointed to replace Romanian executive Dusan Wilms at the beginning of December, who had run the Metro Cash&Carry business in Romania for a second four-year term in 2009-2013.
Roudy had previously served as commercial manager of Real International, the hypermarket division of the Metro Group.
Wilms, one of the most powerful executives in the retail business in Romania, is now supervising the repositioning of the real,- Hyper Magazine hypermarkets in Romania still held by Metro Group. Real sold 20 hypermarkets of the 24 it had in the country to Auchan at the end of 2012.
4. Nikolai Beckers
Chief executive officer of Cosmote and Romtelecom (EUR1 billion revenue in 2012 together) as of April 2013. He had previously served as CEO of T-Systems France as of September 2011. Beckers has an extensive experience in telecommunications, IT, Internet and social media. He started his career at Deutsche Bank in 1989 and has held various management positions such as chairman and CEO of Deutsche Telekom, France, managing director of Deutsche Telekom Philippines and financial director of T-Online France. He was also a CEO of the DT subsidiary in Macedonia.
5. Charlie Cunningham-Reid
General manager of JTI Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria, since early 2013. His coming was prepared in 2012 when he was transferred to JTI Romania as vice-president and head of the consumer&trade marketing unit. He had previously worked as general manager of JTI Bulgaria. He has an eleven-year experience with the company and started his career in the music industry at Virgin Retail Ltd., and then spent four years as business manager with Worldwide Brands Incorporated (WBI) in UK. A Cambridge graduate, he studied business administration and finance.
6. Virgil Metea
General manager of Romania’s biggest natural gas producer Romgaz (EUR925 million revenue in 2012) since mid-2013. He is one of the managers selected based on Ordinance 109/2011 on corporate governance of state-owned companies. He had previously served in various management positions with E.ON.
He started his career as an engineer in the natural gas drilling business in Targu-Mures in 1985 and then moved up the ladder to technical director until 2001. In 2001-2002, he worked for Romgaz as head of development. He is a graduate of the Petroleum-Gas Institute of Ploiesti (now known as the Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti).
7. Mihail Viorelian Stanculescu
General manager of hydropower producer Hidroelectrica (EUR540 million revenue in 2012) as of February 2013. He had previously served as head of development with the same company.
8. Leonard Leca
CEO of Tiriac Holdings (more than EUR500 million revenue in 2012) since June 1, 2013. The 41-year old executive runs a group of more than 40 companies in various sectors such as automotive, real estate, finance, leasing, air transport and energy.
A graduate of the Faculty of Finance and Banking with the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, he replaced Petre Vaduva, who became chief executive of Romania’s gas transmission company Transgaz Medias. Leca had previously served as chief financial officer of Tiriac Holdings.
In 2001-2005, he worked for water cooler bottler La Fantana, first as CFO (2001-2003) and then as deputy CEO (2003-2005).
9. Christian Beck
He became chief executive of Rewe Romania (EUR433 million revenue in 2012), the company that manages the Penny Market and XXL Mega Discount chains, in February, replacing Guenter Becker, CEO of Rewe Romania and Head of Penny International.
The local retail operations are managed by a team of three people, so Beck works with Simon Hamersky (chief operating officer of XXL Mega Discount) and Daniel Gross (CFO of Rewe Romania).
Before taking the job in Romania, Beck had worked in the retail business in Hungary for such companies as Auchan and Cora for almost fifteen years. He has a graduate degree in economics from Ecole superieure des sciences commerciales d’Angers and also worked for Siemens and Ahlstrom.
10. Michele Della Briotta
Managing Director Eastern Europe at Tenaris and Executive Vice President of Tenaris Silcotub (EUR375 million revenue in 2012). From the position he got this year, the 41-year old executive supervises an industrial complex that includes a steel mill, a non-welded pipe plant, and a services center network, among others. He has a multicultural team of more than 1,700 people reporting to him.
Della Briotta is also in charge of Tenaris’ sales of OCTG (oil country tubular goods, which are pipes for the oil and gas industry) in Continental Europe, Russia and the Caspian Sea region.
He holds a degree in electrical engineering from Politecnico di Milano and an MBA from IESE Universidad de Navarra and Berkeley Business School. He has been working for Tenaris for 16 years, stationed in various countries such as Italy, Mexico, Argentina, United States and Romania. Silcotub is the most profitable and valuable company in Romania’s steel industry, having doubled its profit in 2012 to 231 million lei (EUR52 million), while revenue rose by 15.5% to RON1.66 billion.
11. Daniela Lulache
Former general manager of Fondul Proprietatea in 2008-2009, she became general manager of nuclear power producer Nuclearelectrica (EUR370 million revenue in 2012), a company with a market share of 20%, this May.
An economist by trade without any experience in the energy sector, she was chosen based on the Ordinance 109/2011 on the corporate governance of public sector companies. She has a 20-year experience in the finance and banking business, having worked for Romania’s central bank BNR, Fondul Proprietatea, Raiffeisen Bank and the Banking Asset Resolution Authority (AVAB).
Her appointment to the helm of Nuclearelectrica came as a surprise, considering how specialized the industry is, as well as the delicate nature of the nuclear power production business, which requires many years to train a real expert.
12. Igor Tikhonov
The executive will start his term as general manager of Ursus Breweries (EUR288 million revenue in 2012) in January 2014 and replaces Andrew Highcock, who was sent to run the Ursus’ owner SAB Miller’s operations in Poland.
The new 43-year old Russian boss of Ursus Breweries has been working for SAB Miller since 2001, when he started as sales manager for the Russian Federation. He was promoted to strategy director for Russia in 2006 and then took on the general manager duties for the Commonwealth of Independent States, a job he held in 2007 and 2008. Tikhonov was then appointed head of the Ukrainian operations in 2008 and became general manager of SAB Miller in Slovakia in March 2012.
13. Hans Dewaele
General manager of P&G Distribution (EUR282 million revenue in 2012), a position the Belgian-born executive got in February 2013. He joined P&G as an employee of the marketing department in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1988.
He then came in Romania for a four-year term after which he moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he stayed until 2001, supervising the marketing department of the cosmetics unit in Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa. He has held various management positions in countries from Asia and Africa, such as Pakistan and Algeria since 2001.
His last position before taking the reins of the Romanian operations was vice-president Caucasus, Central Asia Republics and Mongolia. In his current position, he supervises the operations in Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo from Bucharest.
14. Giovanni Quaglia
General manager of Bunge Romania, which posted EUR254 million revenue in 2012. The merger of vegetable oil processing operations of Bunge and Portugal’s Prio Foods caused management changes. Cristian Ungureanu, 37, left in 2012 and was replaced by Tsvetan Iliev, who had spent more than ten years working for Bunge and had run the Bulgarian operations of the US-held trader for a number of years. The company replaced Iliev with Italian executive Giovanni Quaglia, known as a corporate restructuring expert, in 2013.
Before joining Bunge in 2007, where he stayed until 2010, he had worked for Cargill for 18 years, according to his LinkedIn account. Quaglia also served as CFO of food processor Trans-Oil (Republic of Moldova) prior to returning to Bunge.
15. Narcis Stefan Neaga
General manager of Romania’s company in charge of highways and national roads CNADNR (EUR239 million revenue in 2012) since August 2013. He has been working for CNADNR since 2002, where he has held various management positions. Before that, he had served as regional development advisor with the Development and Forecast Ministry in 2001 and 2002 and as chief of staff of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises minister in 2001.
Previous employment also includes the marketing department of automotive component manufacturer Compa Sibiu (1994-1998), IT company Intercomputer, and industrial company Mirfo. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca and of many courses organized by the Romanian Marketing Institute.
NOTE: The ranking used the list of the largest companies by 2012 revenue recorded for a single legal entity. (EUR1=RON4.4597)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)