The latest such change was made by Philips, where Robin van Rozen replaced Macedonian executive Gorian Lalchevski after less than two years.
The other companies both in retail and manufacturing in this industry that changed their manager were Indesit, Gorenje, Flanco and Domo.
Philips put another expat in charge of the Romanian operations, who had previously worked as senior marketing director for Central and Eastern Europe, as his LinkedIn profile shows. The executives in top management positions of multinationals generally have years of experience working for their group.
An example in this regard is Marius Mihailescu, put in charge of the Romanian operations of home appliances manufacturer Indesit. He took the position after having worked as sales manager for company since 2003. Prior to joining Indesit, he had worked for another company in the business, Philips, as a manager of the electrical and computer retail unit.
Some managers, however, are the exception to the rule, such as Dragos Dinu, who took the reins of Domo, the second largest local electrical and computer retailer, according to the latest publicly available data.
Dinu had previously worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years. He served as chief executive officer of A&D Pharma, the biggest local pharmaceutical group until 2008 and was given a seat in the board of directors of Domo last fall, joining founder Lorand Szarvadi and Lucian Ghitescu. Less than three months later he became CEO.
Slovenian home appliances manufacturer Gorenje, too, appointed an executive from another industry, expat Damir Drazetic to run its local operations. He replaced Tone Prislan, who had at the helm since 2002.
In an industry where heads of companies are mostly male, Violeta Luca, 33, became chief executive of Flanco, the third largest electrical and computer retailer in Romania, last year.
Her appointment came less than a year after joining the company as marketing director. She had previously worked for Whirlpool Romania.
The local electronics, home appliances and computer industry stood at EUR1.4 billion last year. It was hurt by the crisis but has been showing signs of a rebound lately, growing 2% in 2012.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)