“We have 2,000-2,100 middle managers who went through training programs (though not all did an MBA). (…) They are the new generation of managers and one of them could become the company’s future CEO,” said Gheorghe. She attended Tuesday evening an event organized by the WU Executive Academy of the Vienna University of Economics and Business at the launch of a new Executive MBA program for 2012-2014.
Accepting to become CEO of a company going through privatization and modernization, which needs extensive restructuring and has the strongest trade union in the country, was not an easy decision to make, Mariana Gheorghe said.
“The biggest challenge I have faced in my career has been taking the position of CEO of OMV Petrom. I didn’t expect it to be so difficult because as a banker for 14 years I told company managers what I thought was best for them to do, but from the other side things look completely different,” she said, in answer to a question from a student who joined the Executive MBA program of the WU Executive Academy.
The CEO of Petrom has a degree from the Faculty of International Business and Economics within Bucharest’s Academy of Economic Studies, and one from Bucharest’s Law School within the University of Bucharest and Corporate Finance at the London Business School. From 1993 she worked for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and before coming to Petrom she was senior banker of the EBRD for South-Eastern Europe and the Caspian Region. After the privatization of Petrom in 2004, Mariana Gheorghe became member of Petrom’s Board of Directors as an EBRD representative.
“When I became CEO of Petrom I understood what it meant to take decisions in a company with tens of thousands of employees, restructure it and have to negotiate almost daily with representatives of the strongest trade union in Romania,” Mariana Gheorghe told managers present at the event, adding that a litigation case brought by employees can make millions of euros disappear from a company in a split second.
She says it doesn’t matter for an employer if an employee you invested in leaves the company, because they will come into contact with the company again through their new projects and the company will stand to benefit from their knowledge.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)