Whereas so far the salaries of executives in multinationals were made public only through head-hunters, who came up with an average of the employers’ salary offers per industry, the fact that some executives in big foreign companies moved from the private into the public sector saw the first official salary disclosures for multinational executives on the Romanian market.
“Salaries can be even higher, at least in banking and insurance. Many of those who moved from the state sector to the private sector want to try their hand, gain new life experience, even though they earn less,” believes George Butunoiu, one of the best-known head-hunters on the Romanian market and founder of George Butunoiu Executive Search Consultants.
Rudolf Fedorovici, head-hunter with executive search firm Advice Human Resources, believes in some industries, such as energy, banking, retail and auto, salaries can be much higher.
“I would be surprised to learn that a senior manager in a top ten energy company in Romania earns less than EUR300,000 to 350,000 a year (EUR25,000 to 29,000 per month). The same can be said about senior managers in top five banks,” Fedorovici added.
The first salary of a multinational head to be made public was that of Alexandrina Gatej, former CEO of Unilever South Central Europe, because she had to declare a salary of around EUR18,000 a month when she took over as head of the Domestic and International Business Environment Department of the Presidential Administration. At present she is president of the Romanian-American Chamber of Commerce. Another executive, Adrian Baicusi, had to disclose his income as a general manager of Siemens Romania – EUR20,500 per month – when he filled out his personal financial disclosure statement after becoming general manager of state-held company Transelectrica.