“The rating agencies and the IMF tell us we are not doing that badly. Many won and lost without knowing why they won or why they lost. In the future, managers should have a better idea of where they are going,” says Vasile Iuga, head of the local office of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), one of the big four audit firms worldwide.
Iuga yesterday also officially launched the book “Success formulas for the next decade,” written in collaboration with Andrej Vizjak, leader of PwC’s Business Advisory Services in the region. The book analyzes how the 500 leading companies responded in the first year of economic crisis (2009), with four profiles of companies that beat the crisis emerging.
“Good managers can make the difference. Romania needs professional managers, educated in schools,” says Iuga. For a small company it is better to consolidate its position on the local market and even specialize on a niche, rather than dissipate its resources into an effort of expanding abroad, Vizjak says.
“Major companies have remained as healthy as can be, and are able to pull the economy back up. As far as small and medium-sized companies are concerned, the situation is complicated, after they have not been modernized for years and many are too indebted to survive,’ says Guy Poupet, chairman and CEO of lender BRD-Groupe Societe Generale.
National Bank of Romania (BNR) governor Mugur Isarescu preferred to look at the “curative” effects of the crisis, which corrects the imbalances created during the years of steady growth. He says this is a time when society should learn lessons.
“We are asking ourselves why consumer spending has fallen in Romania more than elsewhere. Why don’t you ask – why had consumer spending increased so much,” said Isarescu, suggesting it was easier to answer the second question. One of the sources would be the increase in public sector salary spending by 80% during the boom years. The governor says the health of companies and of banks on an individual basis is essential to the functioning of the economy, but that macroeconomic balance is harder to achieve.
“Macroeconomic stability in the absence of microeconomic success is an illusion. But discipline and stability of each individual bank does not mean financial stability at the macroeconomic level. When every bank hangs on tightly to its money, the resulting picture in the economy may be different,” said Isarescu at the seminar “Biggest players in the economy. Companies that beat the crisis. Lessons for the next period of economic growth,” organized by ZF, PwC and BNR.