Big names like Gates (USA), Schaeffler (Germany), Ortega (Spain), Mulliez (France), Kamprad (Sweden) and Leviev (Israel) have bet on Romania’s potential in the past almost thirty years. Many family businesses created or taken over by world’s billionaires have become leaders on the local market either by revenue or by number of employees or expansion rate. Germany’s Schaeffler, for instance, run by Georg Schaeffler and his mother Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler-Thumann, has about 20,000 employees in Romania (in the ball bearing plant in Brasov and in the plants of Continental, in which the group holds stake).
Inditex, the group created by Spanish businessman Amancio Ortega, world’s second richest man, has an about EUR300 million business with more than 100 stores in Romania, and France’s Mulliez family invested more than EUR1 billion in the Romanian subsidiaries of Auchan, Leroy Merlin and Decathlon during the crisis.
How was Romania put on the investment map of such giants?
“We are talking about businesses created to become world leaders. This is the vision behind these giants and the vision their founders had when they started out,” explains Aliz Kosza, one of the most experienced Romanian executives, who ran MOL, Orkla Foods and Fabryo’s local operations and currently has her own strategy and business mentoring firm.
“They may no longer be the ones making expansion decisions, but those that took the reins of their businesses stay true to the original vision when it comes to development. Microsoft’s vision, for instance, was to put a computer on every desk in every home, which means Africa, and Asia, too, as well as Romania.”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)