The total turnover of the analyzed companies was EUR161.7 million last year, up 6.5% from 2011, and their number of employees was 3,140.
Although the portfolio of the two businessmen also includes the Pizza Hut and KFC chains, Howard Johnson hotel and the Dorobanti 239 building, formerly headquarters of Petrom, the “pearl” of the portfolio remains the Baneasa project, where Baneasa Developments and Baneasa Investments reported total profits of over EUR20 million.
Popoviciu and Dimofte, two very strong, yet discreet investors, are difficult to identify even in the Trade Registry, where very few companies are held in their own name.
The names of the two investors appear together only at Brokero SA, which was dissolved in 2006, while Dimofte still features as a direct shareholder in a set of companies such as Parc Hotels, Practic SA, Casa Doina and Aviatorilor Development, a company through which the businessman has recently constructed an office building close to Charles de Gaulle place in northern Bucharest. It is not clear where the businesses of the two investors meet and where their roads part.
The biggest contributor to the profit increase was the Baneasa project in northern Bucharest, in particular the commercial area that includes Baneasa Shopping City mall and Feeria shopping gallery, developed on an over 170-ha land of the Faculty of Agronomy. The profit of over EUR20 million recorded last year by Baneasa Developments and Baneasa Investments can in part be attributed to Greek Georgios Argentopoulos coming to the helm of the commercial area at the beginning of last year. He came with a different management model than that of his predecessor Ali Ergun Ergen, whose focus was development.
“2012 was a year of transformation for Baneasa Developments including many new systems implementation and certain reorganizations. Despite the additional effort required to implement the above, the organization managed to run its operations successfully in a profitable manner,” Georgios Argentopoulos, CEO of Baneasa Developments, told ZF.
He says he internalized several services, which contributed to cutting operating costs and that in the first year of full functioning of Grand cinema, it contributed EUR3.5 million to the project’s results, while revenues from rent and from advertising went up 10%. Major profits of over EUR12 million in total were brought by Universal SA, Practic SA and Meteor SA, through which several hundred commercial spaces in Bucharest are managed, with the companies boasting profit margins of over 50%.
Companies US Food Network and Americal Restaurant System, which manage KFC and Pizza Hut chains among others, had the largest turnover last year, of EUR42 million and EUR26 million respectively, but the total profit of the two companies was just EUR2.6 million.
Who was loss-making?
The hotel businesses in Bucharest, Howard Johnson hotel in Romana Place, controlled by Gabriel Popoviciu, and the Parc complex in northern Bucharest, held by Radu Dimofte, recorded slightly lower revenues in 2012 and turned to losses of around EUR1.5 million each.
The biggest loss maker is currently Oradea Shopping City mall in Oradea, which at a turnover of EUR1.8 million reported a loss of EUR5.6 million.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)