Romania 2008: Returnees Emerge to Lead Renaissance
By Thomas Escritt
March 7, 2008
Financial Times
Thomas Escritt profiles six movers and shakers to watch over the coming years.
Mariana Gheorghe
Chief Executive, Petrom
Romania is still recovering from a catastrophic brain drain. In the 1990s many of the country's brightest opted to leave to pursue careers in academia and finance in Europe and America. Few have returned, though Ms Gheorghe, chief executive of Petrom, Romania's largest company, is part of the trickle. Ms Gheorghe graduated in law from Bucharest University in the 1989. After a stint working at a state chemicals company and the finance ministry in the early 1990s,she rose to become a senior banker at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. She was appointed chief executive of Petrom, a subsidiary of Austria's OMV, in 2006, and is a rare female chief executive in a country with one of the lowest levels of female participation in the workforce.
Cristian Mungiu
Film Director
Mr Mungiu won the Palme d'Or for his film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a harrowing portrayal of a woman seeking an abortion in the last years of the Ceausescu regime. He was just two years out of film college during the Romanian film industry's 2000 annus horribilis, when "not a single Romanian film was made all year". Things have improved since then, even if the country's film industry is highly dependent on work for US and German productions. Mobra Films, the company he owns with two director partners, got its start doing service production for a big-budget German feature film. The aim has always been to rely less on contract work - documentaries and adverts - and survive as an independent creative production company, though Mr Mungiu acknowledges that Romania's film industry would never survive without government subsidies.
Gabriel Marin
IT Entrepreneur
Mr Marin quit a steady job with Control Data Corporation in 1992, and, with just $500 in cash, founded Omnilogic, today one of the largest systems integrators in south-east Europe. "It was quite a hectic and wild time," he remembers. The biggest challenge for an importer was obtaining hard currency. "It's hard to do financial planning when the currency is depreciating by 300 per cent a year and inflation is running in three digits." At first, the company focused on importing PCs and networking gear. Today, the company helps some of the largest telecommunications companies and banks in the region to roll out infrastructure. With clients in Bulgaria, Albania and Moldova as well as Romania, Omnilogic earned €200m last year, and is targeting €1bn in revenues within five years.
Irina Schrotter
Fashion Designer
Ms. Schrotter took a huge gamble in the uncertain environment of Romania in 1990 when she chose to give up a career as a doctor just one year after qualifying and set up as an independent fashion designer. Eighteen years later, she employs 1,000 people and her company produces clothing both for her own six boutiques and for major clothing retailers on four continents. "It was hard starting out in the 1990s. In 1993, banks were charging interest rates of 175 per cent, so I was dependent on my textiles suppliers, who had faith in me, for loans." The company cleared its debts after 10 years and today Ms Schrotter is as often to be found in Paris or Milan as at her headquarters in the eastern city of Iasi. While much of Romania's once-strong textiles industry has decamped to cheaper labour markets such as Ukraine or Moldova, Ms Schrotter still manufactures in Romania.
Monica Macovei
Anti-corruption Campaigner
Abrasive but popular, Ms. Macovei served as Romania's minister of justice until 2007, when she was dismissed by the prime minister. To her fans, she was the staunch independent who led a determined campaign to clean up Romanian public life. While she was justice minister, investigations were launched into corruption allegations leveled at many senior political figures. "The political class is still in shock," says one close ally. Another, describes her as "the leader of a movement that is new in Romania, advocating justice reform and integrity." This reformist fervor leads the same ally to describe her as being "almost like a nun" in her rigid approach to transparency. Since leaving the government, she has been serving as an adviser on anti-corruption in Macedonia.
Dan Pascariu
Banker
When he is not running Unicredit Tiriac, the Italian bank's Romanian subsidiary, Mr Pascariu turns his mind to the pig farm he runs in his spare time. Mr Pascariu, who began his career as an academic economist in the 1970s, earned his spurs negotiating with Romania’s creditors following the country's debt crisis in the early1980s. He headed the Romanian Bank for Foreign Trade following the 1989 revolution, and has managed a variety of finance houses since. "By nature I'm an optimist," he says, explaining that his pig-farming sideline is just one more business opportunity. "Romania imports 4m pigs a year," he points out - despite pork being a Romanian staple.
