After seven years as second in command to Steven van Groningen, in his position of first vice-president, Marinel Burduja, 58, will leave the Austrian-held bank on June 30.
Banking sources say the decision about the timing of the executive’s departure had been made in early this year after several rounds of talks conducted in part at the bank’s headquarters in Vienna.
Under the circumstances, the banker has had enough time to look at the market and consider his options. He will not reveal his plans but says this time of change finds him full of energy, which is one of his well-known personality traits.
The major customers in Raiffeisen’s corporate portfolio have already been notified about the upcoming replacement of the division head. The departure of a corporate banker as important as Burduja usually carries the risk of certain clients with which strong ties have developed over the years leaving with him.
A decisive factor is the brand, as well as the financial strength of the lender where Burduja moves – assuming that he chooses to continue his banking career, as his expertise and the political connections he has give him a lot of options, potentially in the public banking sector, as well.
He served as a National Salvation Front (FSN) deputy in the first Parliament elected after the fall of communism in 1990, but resigned in the fall in 1991 to join the former Bancorex bank. After a one-year banking career hiatus he returned this time as vice-president of Bancorex the then most powerful bank on the market where he stayed until 1996 when he left for Creditanstalt.
He was vice-president of ABN Amro from 1998 through 2001, one of the ‘training ground’ institutions for the local corporate banking market and at the end of 2001 joined Raiffeisen’s project to build a powerful bank out of the former Banca Agricola (Agricultural Bank).
Though he has been vice-president of several banks, he has never served as a chief executive officer. Rumors spread in the banking system at times about his intention to become the head of a top bank, and one of such targets mentioned at some point was BCR. His departure from Raiffeisen theoretically boosts his chances of a promotion, considering Steven van Groningen should remain at the helm of the Austrian-held bank.
The only major bank that has an opening for a CEO is Banca Transilvania, after Robert Rekkers left, while BCR cleared up the succession at the beginning of the year.
As for Burduja’s replacement at the helm of the corporate division, the bank hired a headhunter to manage the selection process, as such a position requires checking the entire market even though there are top management resources in house. Van Groningen insists that a Romanian banker be appointed to this position.
Burduja leaves Raiffeisen with a corporate loan portfolio worth almost 5.8 billion lei (EUR1.3 billion) at the end of 2011, 16% higher than in 2010, as the bank started a battle to expand its market share relying on the robustness it had proven during the crisis.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)