07/2016

INTERVIEW: Elected for a second mandate at the helm of the FIC, Eric Stab tells BR what his priorities are in this role and how Romania can attract new investments from large firms that are already present here as well as from new players looking to start doing business locally » page 6

ENERGY WITH ROMANIA ALREADY STRUGGLING TO ATTRACT INVESTORS FOR LARGE ENERGY PROJECTS WORTH BILLIONS OF EUROS, BREXIT MIGHT MAKE THE TASK EVEN HARDER >> PAGE 24

ROMANIA’S PREMIER BUSINESS MAGAZINE

AUGUST, 2016 / VOLUME 20, ISSUE 7

Roll on Rio For the first time since 1968, Romania will not be sending a women’s gymnastics team to the Olympic Games, after failing to qualify for Rio. However, fans still hold out hope that a local competitor will make it onto the podium » page 14

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

EDitorial anda sebesi EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

the culture of performance Although it’s been a hotly debated issue this summer, local gymnastics is about more than the public scandals that have lifted the lid on major mistreatment and suffering. It is about performance and the power of always thinking as a winner. Top performance, in whatever field, comes with years of sacrifice and there is a cost for every action. This applies equally at macroeconomic level.

Both small and large businesses across all sectors and industries face challenges when they operate on a very competitive market that requires them to adapt first and then try to do their best to perform. Both local and multinational companies set targets, objectives and actions that lead to performance. And then, to success.

That means that a clear strategy is crucial for long-term positive results.

One example is Romania’s performance at the most prestigious advertising festival in the world, Cannes Lions 2016.

The country had some 187 entries, 24 shortlists and 11 trophies – two golds, four silvers and five bronzes, a national record in this sector.

Pundits say that Romania had a good year in Cannes and they are calling on industry players to build a creative reputation for the country. And this can be done only by winning year after year with campaigns that generate conversations in the festival. Agencies need to focus on creating “famous work”, campaigns that people remember, recognize and respect as “that great campaign from Romania”.

Unfortunately, the sports education system in Romania cannot tell the same story. It is a faulty system that needs major improvements. Commentators say that without a clear strategy that includes investments in current infrastructure and future improvements like renovations, repairs, development, human resource training, medium- and long-term objectives and attracting financial resources from private companies, the system can’t function.

As Adrian Socaciu, president of the Student Sport Association told Business Review, the Romanian sports sector needs a plan for the next 20 years at all of its levels: from pre-school to university. And this is imperative as Romanians do not have a strong culture of sports.

According to the results of the 2014 Eurobarometer survey on sport and physical activity, 59 percent of EU citizens never or seldom exercise or do sport, and this is similar for Romania too. The study shows that sport or physical activity at home is popular in Eastern European countries, including Romania, with 53 percent of regional respondents to the survey saying they exercise, though only 6 percent use health or fitness centers.

Although more Romanians have started to take part in marathons and sports in recent years, showing their support for various social or philanthropic causes, it is still debatable whether they do it because they’re starting to build a sports culture or just to have a community cause.

But whatever the situation, performance is key: from individual to national level, we all need to practice and improve if we want to make things happen on the medium and long term. anda.sebesi@business-review.ro

EDitorial 3 Contents 3 6

EDITORIAL INTERVIEW

8

OUTSOURCING

10 14 COVER STORY 18 21 22 HEALTHCARE

23 24 ENERGY 26 COUNTRY FOCUS

27 28 BR EVENTS 30 ENTREPRENEUR 32 ADVERTISING 35 EXPAT EYE 36 RESTAURANT REVIEW 37 JAZZ

The culture of performance Romania should promote investors’ success stories to boost regional clout Local BPO industry under the sign of change Outsourcing industry drives up competition on the office market Ringing the changes: an Olympic panorama Exercising good judgement Getting the student body active Team Net wins tender for maintenance of controversial health insurance IT systems Local medical institutions specialize Brexit could worsen outlook for planned local energy projects CCIFER: French investors see high potential but big challenges in legal framework French investors look for legal and fiscal predictability French investors speak of la vie en rose as their optimism grow Fast expansion brewing for 5 to go Cannes do: local ad agencies cele brate awards haul Brexit brings shame on the British A viet-con job All I want is to have fun

issn no.

1453 - 729X FounDing EDitor Bill Avery EDitor-in-chiEF Anda Sebesi DEputY EDitor-in-chiEF Simona Bazavan Journalists Otilia Haraga, Romanita Oprea, Ovidiu Posirca, Oana Vasiliu hEaD copY EDitor Debbie Stowe copY EDitor Eugenia Pupeza photo EDitor Mihai Constantineanu laYout Raluca Piscu publishEr Bloc Notes Media aDDrEss No. 10 Italiana St., 2nd floor, ap. 3 Bucharest, Romania lanDlinE Office: 031.040.09.31

ExEcutivE DirEctor George Moise businEss DEvElopmEnt DirEctor Oana Molodoi salEs DirEctor Ana-Maria Nedelcu salEs consultant Valeria Cornean EvEnts DirEctor Oana Albu markEting Adina Cretu, Marius Andronic, Patricia Neamtu proDuction Dan Mitroi Distribution Eugen Musat Emails editorial@business-review.ro sales@business-review.ro events@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

4 nEWs

nEWsin brief agriculturE romania wants to limit farmland acquisitions by foreigners The authorities are working on new legislation that would limit the amount of farmland that can be purchased by foreigners, according to minister of agriculture, Achim Irimescu. The Ministry of Agriculture has finished a draft bill regulating transactions involving foreign buyers, but it will become applicable only after the land registry plan is completed.

According to the bill, each applicant can buy up to 50 hectares. The current legislation does not stipulate a limit.

The process for buying farmland is currently cumbersome, and includes preemption rights for the state.

EnErgY renewable energy companies worried about new quota Some of the biggest associations in the local renewable sector claim they are extremely worried after the energy regulator ANRE proposed a lower share of the total amount of energy consumption to benefit from the green certificates scheme.

In a joint letter submitted to the top brass in Parliament and the government, the Romanian Wind Energy Association (RWEA), the Renewable En-

Correction: In Issue 6 of Business Review, the name of Crina Ciobanu of Suciu Popa Attorneys appeared under the picture of Monia Dobrescu of Musat & Asociatii, while Dobrescu’s name appeared under the picture of Ciobanu. BR apologizes for any confusion.

ergy Producers Organization in Romania (PATRES) and Romanian Photovoltaic Industry Association (RPIA) say that the proposed 8.3 percent quota for next year is below this year’s level, while according to the renewable law it should have climbed to 18 percent in 2017.

hr head of Eximbank is best paid public sector employee Traian Halalai, the head and executive member of the administration council of Eximbank, is the highest earning public sector employee in Romania, with a gross monthly income of RON 137,585 (over EUR 30,400), according to a document published this July on the Public Consultancy and Civic Dialog Ministry site.

In second place is Radu Gratian Ghetea, the head of the CEC Bank administration council and the bank, with a monthly gross income of RON 121,424, followed by Andrei Liviu Stamatian, vice-president and executive member of administration council at CEC Bank, with RON 83,832.

hEalthcarE First travel-related Zika virus case reported in romania The Romanian Ministry of Health announced this July the first travel-related Zika infection in the country after a 27-year-old woman reported to hospital following a trip to Martinique. According to reports, the young woman attended a hospital two days after returning from the Caribbean island, with symptoms including mild fever and rashes on her chest and arms. Medical investigations confirmed the first Zika infection. The patient is now out of danger.

it government and ibm plan to develop cognitive computing center The Romanian government has signed a memorandum of understanding with American IT giant IBM for the development of an innovation center for cognitive computing called European and National Romanian Innovation Cognitive Hub (ENRICH). Its research will include machine learning and natural language processing. “IBM is the first company to join the efforts to develop cognitive computing in Romania, being the world leader in cognitive computing, as it is backed by investments of over USD 1 billion in the Watson platform,” said the Ministry of Communication in a statement.

The government said that ENRICH’s objectives include an increase in R&D activity in Romania and the creation of experts in cognitive science.

macroEconomics coface: brexit to have limited direct impact in romania on short term

erate about 2.2 percent of the total turnover, noted the consultancy.

managEmEnt romania reports biggest decrease in insolvencies in cEE Romania recorded the sharpest decrease in the number of insolvencies in 2015 among countries in Central and Eastern Europe, a study by Coface reveals. The almost 50 percent drop was due to several favorable conditions, such as the fiscal stimuli the country benefitted from.

Overall, the number of insolvencies fell over the course of 2015 in 9 out of 13 countries.

rEal EstatE argo group sells shopping city sibiu to nEpi for Eur 100 mln Investment company Argo Group has sold retail park Shopping City Sibiu to NEPI for EUR 100 million, according to JLL Romania, the real estate consultancy which represented the seller in the transaction. Shopping City Sibiu has a leasable area of 79,000 sqm. The center was opened in 2006 and was later expanded.

It has as main tenants retailers Carrefour and Auchan. It also hosts stores of key international brands such as Adidas and Leroy Merlin. JLL has said the transaction is the biggest deal to date on this segment outside Bucharest.

The small amount of trade between Romania and the UK alongside the limited direct financial transactions between the two countries means that the local iohannis approves local food economy will not be hit hard after the products law British vote to leave the European Union, President Klaus Iohannis has passed a according to Coface, the credit insurance law compelling supermarkets to source firm. Romanian exports to the UK 51 percent of food products from the amounted to EUR 2.4 billion, accounting Romanian market. The law also forbids for 4.4 percent of total exports in 2015. large retailers to charge producers a According to the official records of the “shelf tax” in order to sell their products.

Ministry of Finance and the Trade Reg- According to the provisions of the newister, a total of 1,094 local companies ly-promulgated law, all shops selling register shareholders with a head office food products must get 51 percent of in the UK and meet the above criteria. meats, eggs, vegetables, fruit, honey, They represent only 0.3 percent of all dairy and bread from the short supply active companies in Romania, but gen- chain, as defined by the law.

rEtail

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nEWs 5

Who’s nEWs br welcomes information for Who’s news. submissions may be edited for length and clarity. get in touch at simona.bazavan@business-review.ro

Bucharest. She began her career in communications in a PR agency and then worked in the pharmaceutical domain for 10 years.

gabriela matei petre butu

Elena iacob

has been promoted to panel builder channel director within Schneider Electric Group. He presently serves as vicepresident partner with Schneider Electric Romania. Butu has professional experience of over 20 years, having worked in Romania as well as in France. He joined the company in 1997 and over the years has held several roles in sales, marketing, client support and price policies until finally leading the partner division. Following this promotion Butu will relocate to France, joining the company’s Grenoble office, and will be part of the commercial team of Schneider Electric group’s partner project division. Butu graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the Polytechnic University in Bucharest.

has been promoted to partner by Zamfirescu Racoti & Partners (ZRP).

She is partner within the consultancy department and will coordinate the law firm’s financial and banking department. Iacob will also lead the competition & state aid department and the public acquisitions department, both of which she has developed since 2010 when she was appointed managing associate.

She has 17 years of professional experience as a lawyer and joined the law firm in 2008.

veronica Dobre is the new communications manager of Holcim Romania, replacing Ioana Borangic. Dobre has a Public Relations diploma from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations UK and graduated from the National School of Political and Administrative Studies in

is the new general manager of Microsoft Romania as of July 1. She replaces Kostas Loukas who moves onto a new position within Microsoft’s Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) organization. In her new role, Matei will report to the president of the firm and will be a member of its executive board.

Prior to this promotion, Matei headed Microsoft Romania’s operations for the SMEs segment and between 2012 and 2014 she served as cloud director. Before joining the software giant, Matei worked for Vodafone Romania for over 15 years, where her last position was that of CCO, enterprise unit position, and was a member of the Vodafone Romania board. She graduated from the Polytechnic University in Bucharest.

umberto sessa has been appointed head of multinational clients, part of the corporate division of Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Romania. He has almost 30 years’ ex-

perience in the financial banking sector and has been working for the past 22 years outside Italy, in Germany and Austria. He served as general director of Intensa Sanpaolo’s subsidiary in Vienna for eight years, and for the last six years he has led the group’s subsidiary in Innsbruck.

Florin trandafirescu has been appointed managing director of Unilever South Central Europe as of July 1. Before the appointment, Trandafirescu led Unilever operations in Czech Republic and Slovakia for four years. He has been working for the FMCG giant for over 19 years during which he has held several management roles, both in Unilever South Central Europe, as well as in other company entities. After leading the Unilever factory in Ploiesti and having been involved in a supply chain project in the UK, he took over the role of director supply chain Unilever South Central Europe. Afterwards he was appointed vice-president supply chain for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Photo: Mihai Constantineanu

Event season review: the br club mixer – July Edition

BR community members at Il Locale Bucharest

∫ br Business Review celebrated the end of a very successful event season with

a new Business Review Club Mixer on July 13 at Il Locale Bucharest. A growing community of leading business men and women enjoyed a dolcevita-themed evening powered by the

exquisite menu created by Chef de Cuisine Alex Bignotti.

The aim of the Business Review Club is to create an ensemble of business-minded people and leaders, as well as entrepreneurs and movers & shakers, who, by joining forces and energies, create a platform for new opportunities, knowledge and possibilities for business growth in Romania.

“The Business Review Club stands for a special community, created with the contribution of outstanding business people, who have said YES to powerful bonding experiences and inspiring conversations, in order to bring back the learnings into their lives and companies. Business Review has brought the story and the backstory of business on the desks, minds and life of thousands of decision makers, entrepreneurs and officials from Romania and abroad for 18 years now, so the Club stands as proof that when great minds think alike and sit together for a drink, nothing is too difficult to attain“ declared Oana Albu, Events Director at Business Review.

The event was a celebration of a very successful season filled with insightful events such as the Tax & Law

Conference, the Business Review Awards, SMEs How-To or the French Investors Forum and an exciting starting point for the conferences prepared for the fall of 2016. The next season will start with a Country Focus series event – the Polish Investors Forum - dedicated to the fast- growing business community in Romania, followed by other Business Review flagship events such as the Foreign investors Summit and Focus on Technology and Telecom.

The next Business Review Club Mixer will take place in September and will mark the 18th anniversary of the magazine and all it has achieved throughout these years.

BR Club membership benefits include, alongside being part of an exclusive business collective, incentives for growth and the latest news and information, a subscription to the printed edition of the magazine as well as VIP access to all Business Review events.

For more details regarding the Business Review Club and membership opportunities, please contact us at jointheclub@business-review.ro. editorial@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

6 intErviEW

romania should ‘promote investors’ success stories to boost regional clout’ Elected for a second mandate at the helm of the Foreign Investors’ Council, Eric stab tells BR in an interview what his priorities are in this role and how Romania can attract new investments from large firms that are already present here as well as from new players looking to start doing business locally. He says that Romania has the potential to grow by more than 4 percent annually provided that the authorities focus on investments in key areas, such as infrastructure. On the Brexit vote, the head of the FIC says the direct impact on Romania will be limited, although on the long run exports might take a hit – but this depends on how the UK actually negotiates its exit terms from the European Union. ∫ oviDiu posirca

represented in the FIC. We represent more than 200,000 jobs.

Why do you think you got a second mandate at the helm of the Foreign investors’ council?

I am pleased to have been elected president of the Foreign Investors’ Council for the second time in a row. I believe the FIC is an important voice of the business community and a well-respected one in the whole country.

I think it is important that the foreign investors who represent a significant share of Romania’s GDP can also express their views on the business climate in the country, on the issues they are facing and how to address them, the goal being for foreign investors, but also Romanian capital, to try to foster economic growth in this country, because we are all interested in economic growth, good business practices and a good business environment. We have been doing this for close to 20 years and we aim to continue going in the same direction because the potential is there.

The question is how do we ensure that at the end of the day there are more investments in the country, how can we ensure that investors feel satisfied with their position here, how can we also make sure we promote Romanian capital as well. There is a bit of a trend, sometimes, to set foreign capital and Romanian capital in opposition – I hear that very often. Actually, it’s a mistake.

Foreign investors are also interested in healthy Romanian capital because we need customers and suppliers, so we want to ensure that the Romanian economy and capital goes well.

The only difference between foreign and Romanian companies/entrepreneurs is the origin of the capital. We are all Romanian companies, we have Romanian employees, so we should have aligned interests and this is something that people sometimes misinterpret or misunderstand.

What do you think about the current government, because there are several high-ranking officials – ministers and state secretaries – that have a lot of experience in the private sector?

I don’t think it is fair to compare governments because the context is always different. Our role as the FIC is to interact with the government.

The current government has some specific features, being a technocratic one, so indeed a number of its members have a background in business. So maybe we speak a little bit more the same language than a more political government. They don’t have an easy task either, the context is complicated.

We have a good quality interaction with them, just as we did with the old government.

What we are paying a lot of attention to is that we have the opportunity to meet on a regular basis, to convey our messages, that there are public consultations taking place on government initiatives, also on parliamentary initiatives, that there are proper impact assessments being carried out whenever legislation or regulations are changed.

What counts for us is predictability, transparency and stability, because this is the basis of any healthy country that wishes to attract investments. I think Romania can still make progress in these areas. It is not quite yet at the level where it should be.

For that to happen, there are some basic rules that should be followed, such as proper consultations, impact assessment before decisions. These are the things for which we have long been advocating and on some aspects we’re seeing progress. It’s interesting what’s happening with the current government in terms of public consultations – there is a ministry taking care of this.

What are your specific objectives as head of the Fic? The general priority is still to ensure that we have an attractive business climate in Romania. This is what we are very focused on, with the goal being to attract

additional investments and to ensure that the investors that are already here are happy with their investments so that together, through those investments, we can boost economic growth.

To do so we have to focus on a number of areas and the FIC has for some time had taskforces, on specific topics such as infrastructure, energy and healthcare. Our goal is both to come up with proposals that are in the interest of Romania, of the country, and to interact with the public authorities, be it the government, Parliament, national agencies and so on to try to ensure that those messages are heard and listened to.

We also work through other channels such as Coalitia pentru Dezvoltarea Romaniei, in which we are a founding

member. We do have regular interactions with the government so this is another channel to convey those messages.

What is important for us is to really work in the interest of Romania, not for specific interests. We don’t have any vested interests. We always focus on what’s important for everybody and to find a consensus as well.

This will be at the heart of my and my fellow board members’ mandate for the 12 months to come.

At present we have around 125 companies in the FIC and it’s increasing, which is good. The stock of foreign investments in Romania since the Revolution is close to EUR 70 billion and more than half of those investments are

Economists generally agree that romania’s economy will grow by around 4 percent of gDp. What do you think about this figure and do you think it is sustainable?

Compared to other countries in the EU, it is good. This being said, it’s probably

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

still not good enough for Romania to keep catching up with the rest of Europe at an increased pace.

Our view is that the potential of Romania is higher.

If you look at where that 4 percent is coming from, at the moment it is still very much driven by consumption. Not enough by investments. We believe that if there is more happening on the investment side, we should be able as a country to deliver a higher level of economic growth.

Unfortunately, one of the big issues we have in Romania is that there are not enough public investments to boost economic growth beyond the 3.5-4 percent that we’re currently seeing.

Infrastructure is one of the areas where obviously more needs to be done.

More needs to happen as well in the area of public administration efficiency at a central and local level.

Do you think the Brexit vote will impact the local economy in any way?

I was sad to see the outcome of the British referendum. It’s not good news, neither for the EU, nor the UK. In terms of the impact, it’s still early days to try to assess it. It’s an unprecedented situation. You can’t compare it to something else similar that has happened before. So far, the British government has not notified its exit according to Article 50.

Will there be significant consequences for Romania? From what I see here and from my gut feeling, I don’t see massive direct consequences.

What is more difficult to assess are the indirect consequences. There are of course a number of countries in Europe that are more exposed to Britain than Romania, and should the consequences of the Brexit be very significant on those countries, this could have collateral and knock-on effects on their interaction with Romania, for instance, in the area of Romanian exports. Depending on the shape in which those countries might end up being, we could see such collateral damage on the Romanian economy.

I hope that those that will be involved in the negotiations and concrete terms of the exit will ensure that the economic consequences for the EU, including Romania, will not be too significant.

FDi climbed last year to a six-year high of Eur 3 billion. What’s your outlook for this year?

Based on the data from the first quarter, we have seen a decrease, so whether we will catch up in the remainder of the year and reach EUR 3 billion, it’s difficult to say.

What I do believe is that we need more investments from the existing investors that are here and already know Romania well. We need to make sure there are more investments coming and then of course it would be good to attract new foreign investors and there we have to work on a number of aspects.

One of the things that I find a little bit sad and worrying as well is the gap that we have outside Romania in terms of the perception of the country: the gap

intErviEW 7 between perception and reality.

Investment decisions are not always just taken on the absolute reality because you need to know it well. You know it pretty well when you are already active in a country. You know it less well when you look at a country from outside and there perception actually counts a lot, which is why it’s so important in my opinion to work all together on the image that Romania conveys and try to align the perception with the reality.

Then, of course, hard facts are important as well and this is why it is also important that Romania keeps making progress with pretty strong levels of growth, on aspects such as infrastructure. if you were a company looking to invest in central and Eastern Europe, why would you choose romania?

From a more general point of view, what I believe is important to always underline is the potential of the country, which is very significant. What Romania also has to offer – it’s a country that is actually very wealthy but that ignores it. It is rich in natural resources, work force skills in many areas, it is rich in beautiful landscapes, and tourism is still underdeveloped in Romania. It is important to highlight this to any potential investor.

Then, it’s important to have a few success stories to put forward, to ensure that there are testimonies, people explaining what their experience on the Romanian market is.

There is also another aspect that we should not underestimate. When an investor is looking at a country in the region to build a new factory, for instance, they will also compare countries – where will I be better treated in terms of stability, predictability and transparency? Where will I have the best infrastructure to reach my markets?

Where is the most interesting potential?

Romania, from this point of view, also has very positive things to show. how do investors perceive romania from the perspective of labor costs?

The important aspect in my opinion is competitiveness and there are many important things from this point of view: fair salaries, which doesn’t necessarily mean low salaries.

At the moment, if you go further east, even pretty far east, yes, you can find cheaper workers than in Romania, but this is not the point, but how competitive is the economy overall. For that we have to speak about productivity, not just salaries. We have to talk about the other things that a country can offer, such as a skilled labor force, flexible labor legislation – and here I am not speaking about flexibility just to be able to decrease your staff very easily, but how competitive is the labor legislation in Romania compared to other countries that are also trying to attract investments. ovidiu.posirca@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

8 OUTSOURCING

Local BPO industry under the sign of change With a well-grounded tradition in BPO services, Romania was ranked fourth in the 2015 BPO and Shared Service Location Index published by Cushman & Wakefield. BR talked to some of the major players in this industry about what has changed since they started their activity in Romania, in terms of the services required by clients of BPO centers, teams and recruitment processes, the evolution of the business climate and the priorities of their business. ∫ OTILIA HARAGA “We all have the tendency to compare Poland and Romania when it comes to the BPO and SSC market, but we must take into account that Poland entered this market before Romania, ten years ago. Considering the studies carried out by various organizations, as well as the trends across universities, we have discovered that the labor force has potential on the Romanian BPO market.

Romania benefits from good language skills and a high education level in young people. In spite of all this, employers are investing in programs that are increasing the employment chances in this industry,” Shibu Nambiar, COO Genpact Europe, Latin America & Africa, tells BR. Genpact entered the Romanian market in 2005. It started with three customers and approximately 80 employees. “At the moment, we have a portfolio of over 50 customers in Europe and more than 4,500 employees,” Nambiar adds.

The company has focused a great deal on expanding the team to match its operational necessities. “Over the past two years, we have hired approximately 1,500 people each year, 70 percent of whom were actively recruited.

The Bucharest office is the largest in Europe, with over 2,100 employees, because the most complex operations are delivered from Romania,” says Nambiar.

According to data from the risco.ro website, Genpact’s turnover in Romania totaled EUR 91 million, with a net profit of EUR 9.96 million and a net profit margin of 10.9 percent.

“Our targets include the growth of the business and operations as well as moving our office to a new building and launching a new internal platform dedicated to our employees. We expect to expand the Romanian team to 5,000 employees. At global levels, we plan to grow by 16-17 percent,” Nambiar tells BR. BPO players canvassed by BR all agreed that BPO services have evolved and specialized a great deal since the

Shibu Nambiar, Genpact

Andreea Stanescu, Stefanini

Arnold Cobbaert, Conectys CEO

initial moment when they entered the market.

Through this industry, Romania is able to attract some of the large multinational service providers globally. If we look at the industry today, it is estimated to have around 100,000 employees, purely working in the services and IT environment. You can count as well all the connected industries, from real estate and services,”says Razvan Patrunoiu, country managing director at Accenture Romania.

According to him, in the case of Accenture in Romania, in the BPO space we’re talking about services like highend accounting, financial planning and analysis, project finance controlling, recruitment services in the HR space; we’re talking about energy management services. You can call them niche from a momentum perspective but that’s our key focus going forward. In the infrastructure segment, we have recently taken over the oper-

ations of a data center for one of the banks operating in Romania.

“In the past 24 months, we have seen a gradual change of BPO needs in Europe, with increased demand for global shared services centers (GBSC) instead of just shared service centers.

The portfolio of services at GBSC includes finance, procurement, HR, accounts payable and receivable among other services. Most GBSC are in Eastern European countries, where Romania plays a key role in this market,” Andreea Stanescu, vice-president of Stefanini EMEA Delivery, tells BR. At the moment, Stefanini has more than 2,000 employees in BPO activities, 200 of these working from Romania. “We intend to expand our team by 15 percent this year. (…) In 2015, the employee retention rate reached 80 percent,” says Stanescu.

Last year, Stefanini’s business in Romania reached EUR 140 million, marking 30 percent growth for the application division (representing one

third of the turnover) and 28 percent growth for the infrastructure services division, including the service desk.

Romania’s contribution to commercial revenues in the EMEA region was substantial, of around 40-50 percent, according to Stanescu.

Stefanini has expanded its portfolio with 15 new clients, most of which are multinational companies from industries such as FMCG, energy, banking, automotive and chemicals.

“We also foresee an increase in demand for process automation based upon RPA (Robotic Process Automation). We have been working with this technology for many years already, having specialized teams in multiple regions, capable of supporting RPA demand worldwide,” says Stanescu.

Gregoire Vigroux, marketing director Europe at Telus International Europe, tells BR, “Digital services are rapidly becoming the new, critical channel to drive satisfaction and loyalty in the BPO world, rather than

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

OUTSOURCING 9

Claudiu Petre, Telekom Romania

Gregoire Vigroux, Telus International

Philippe Garcet, Societe Generale

phone or email. In Romania, organizations are at different stages of maturity with their digital programs. Some are only listening to customers via social media, using ‘voice of the customer’ information to improve marketing, products and support. Others are regularly engaging with customers and achieving positive outcomes, including reduced contacts in other support channels.”

CallPoint New Europe was founded in Romania in 2007 by Vigroux and another French entrepreneur, Yann Bidan. In 2012, Telus International acquired CallPoint, and the company reached a headcount of 1,062 people in July 2016, compared to 215 team members in September 2012.

“In addition to the 5,200 sqm our company occupies in AFI Park 3, Telus International Europe has just taken additional 3,000 sqm of space inside AFI Park 4&5. 2017 will be a year of growth – we have the necessary office space to handle this growth in AFI, and what remains to be done is to hire very talented team members to join our company and serve our clients,” Vigroux told BR. While BPO employers demand higher skills from potential employees, it’s a two-way street.

“Potential employees are more demanding than they used to be. Since there is a lot of competition in outsourcing (the industry employs more than 60,000 people in 2016, according to the ABSL), employers need to offer the best and widest range of benefits to attract best talents and differentiate from competitors,” says Vigroux.

The evolution of the services offered by BPO businesses is closely dependent on customer needs, which are constantly evolving.

Conectys CEO Arnold Cobbaert tells BR, “Size, cost, and reputation are no longer the primary BPO vendor selection criteria. Buyers expect their fu-

ture partners to innovate, by blending traditional FTE delivery models, with process automation and a real-time view into their outsourced processes performance levels. They expect their BPO partner to take a more consultative approach, challenge them and deliver value-driven optimization and automation.”

Conectys has grown from only one client at the end of 2004, to over 61 clients in 2016. Its revenues in Romania are up 500-fold compared to 2004, says Cobbaert.

The company aims to further consolidate its position in Bucharest and Sibiu as well as continue to expand globally (outside its current operations in Belgium, the Philippines, and Taiwan), “emerging as the only Bucharest-headquartered Romanian outsourcing services provider with a truly global footprint,” Cobbaert tells BR. Since Romania is an emerging market, and more and more organizations have moved their Shared Service and non-BPO operations to the country, salaries have been constantly growing in the past years (twice as high now compared to 2004/2005), and the trend will continue, says Cobbaert.

In spite of this, “even though Conectys maintains a healthy retention rate, the stiff competition on the Romanian market and labor arbitrage have pushed the rate down compared to 2004,” he tells BR. The development of services has also required the appearance of new positions in some of these BPO companies, and Conectys is one such example. “The ever-growing online consumer communities required specialized social media and content moderator talent. Consumer insights analysis and big data needed tenured reporting analysts – and these are just some examples of the new roles in BPO. Another role that Conectys has

invested in, as part of its friends and family culture, is the employee engagement manager, charged with making sure the teams are constantly engaged (…),” Cobbaert tells BR. Over the years, the recruitment process has also changed, and recruiters face new challenges. “New processes such as remote video interviews, online tests, social media background checks, remote group interviews and collaborative clientConectys interviews are invaluable resources that have dramatically improved the efficiency of Conectys’s global recruitment programs (on-site and work from home),” says Cobbaert.

Philippe Garcet, CEO of Societe Generale European Business Services, tells BR, “With the growth and diversification of services, it became more and more difficult to find profiles on the market. Taking into account the banking specifics, we needed to have a complex mix of banking, IT and French-speaking profiles, and we have faced fierce competition in acquiring and retaining talents.”

He adds, “We entered the Romanian BPO market in early 2011, when SG EBS set up its Finance Shared Services Center. From inception, SG EBS was positioned as a European center for Societe Generale’s European operations, providing finance services such as regulatory reporting, accounting and accounts payable for SG Group Europe’s entities.”

Since then, the team has acquired new skills such as finance, HR, IT, consultancy and risk. The average age of team members is around 30, the majority (85 percent) being women. Employees are offering services in more than eight languages and serving more than 40 clients,” says Garcet.

“In 2012 we expanded the scope of our activities, through the delivery of HR services. We offered contact center, recruitment, workforce administra-

tion and training for Romanian entities, and shortly after, group corporate HR. By the end of 2012, we had reached 150 staff members,” says Garcet.

He adds that over 2013-2014, SG EBS saw a spike in development, with the transfer of many finance and HR services from France.

“By the end of 2014, we’d also created a third Shared Service Center for IT, ending 2014 with 450 staff members. From 2015, we started to diversify our services with IT development for corporate investment banking, risk, etc. We also increased the portfolio of Societe Generale Group’s entities, having currently nearly 800 staff members, and we aim to follow the same trend for the next two years,” Garcet tells BR. He confirms that customers have become more demanding as “we have taken over sensitive activities such as regulatory reporting, statutory reporting and IT development for front office of corporate investment banking (traders).”

SG EBS’s number of customers has gone from six individual legal entities in 2011 to 20 individual legal entities at end-2015. The turnover also grew from RON 3.3 million in 2011 to RON 99.5 million in 2015.

“Our business strategy consists of two main directions: accelerating business development to expand our current service offer with banking operation capabilities (banking operations, HR, IT and finance) and stabilization and optimization of operations processes (co-locate activities to create value chain or utilities, reshuffle the organization to have process driven teams), risk (enhancement of the risk framework, leveraging on the SG Group policies), and people (employee value proposition program to retain and attract best local talents),” Garcet tells BR. In 2012, Romanian operator Telekom Romania founded its BPO department. “The first to start activity was the BPO center in Bacau, but now the company has five such centers, across all the country’s regions,” Claudiu Petre, manager of structural funds and business development projects at Telekom Romania, tells BR. The scope of the services has expanded. “While in the first year of activity we were leading only customer relation activities, we gradually added back-office, technical support, retention, debt collection, complaint management, and last but not least, telemarketing and sales, two segments where local and international markets’ interest has peaked exponentially,” he tells BR. Together with a greater range of services came greater profitability.

“While during the first year, we were talking about figures totaling tens of thousands of EUR, now the BPO division is rolling out projects that are generating seven-digit revenues.” otilia.haraga@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

10 OUTSOURCING

Outsourcing industry drives up competition on the office market The ongoing expansion of outsourcing companies on the local market continues to fuel demand for office space, both in the capital and the main regional cities. It also acts as a driver for change by forcing developers to constantly invest in delivering better quality projects and upgrading older ones. these days. Cost is usually the driver – cost per work station that is. An outsourcing company will have stringent margins and may have ‘cost plus’ type agreements so therefore has to be very efficient, Robert Neal, the owner and managing director of Portland Trust, told BR. Given that the space requirements of an outsourcing company are generally large, this leaves a fine line between finding low-cost space in a secondary quality project where rent is the big differentiator and a better quality project with higher rent but a lower service charge, he added. “Hence it is a ‘cost per work space’ analysis and comparison. If the total occupational costs are similar then the choice will be clear to go to the better quality space. Many buildings, some even quite new ones, are simply technologically incapable of offering a high density of 1:6.5 sqm or 1:8 sqm. Ultimately tenants want the best space and flexibility, all at a competitive price,” he concluded.

The outsourcing industry has some 50,000 employees in Romania, about 37,000 of whom are in Bucharest alone, according to market representatives.

The numbers are on the rise with existing players expanding their local operations and new companies eyeing the local market, they add. This is good news for the local office market, which this year will see the delivery of almost 400,000 sqm of new office space, about six times last year’s volume, say industry representatives. They are confident that the market has the capacity to absorb the higher volume, as demand for office space is growing, including from outsourcing companies.

“Leasing contracts signed by outsourcing companies represented almost 20 percent of the new demand for office space reported last year, not taking into account relocations. Given that demand is on an upward trend, we estimate that this share will go up this year,” Claudia Cetatoiu, senior consultant office agency with JLL Romania, told BR. What keeps luring such companies to the local market? First and foremost is the attractiveness of the local labor force, say consultants. Romania boasts a large and cost-competitive pool of graduates in areas such as IT and finance with good language skills in terms of both proficiency and the variety of spoken languages. Some 90 percent of employees from the outsourcing industry speak two foreign languages and in the average call center or support center in Bucharest more than ten foreign tongues are spoken, say real estate consultants. It also helps that the number of flights connecting not only Bucharest but also most regional cities to the rest of Europe has gone up in recent years, they add.

Last but not least, the local office market too has a say in attracting outsourcing companies locally, with both the volume and the quality of local office projects rising in recent years. “Real estate developers active on the local market have proven in the past 12-24 months that they can offer multinational companies the top customized office solutions they would also find in cities like Warsaw, but for lower monthly rents and with the greatest flexibility,” Sorin Visoianu, country

Photo: Telus office in Afi Park

∫ SIMONA BAZAVAN

More than just a desk

Outsourcing companies bring flexibility and personality to the office environment

manager operations Romania at Immofinanz, told BR.

What are outsourcing companies looking for?

Location remains a top selling point in securing an outsourcing company as a tenant, say consultants. With most jobs in the sector being either entry- or midlevel, and young graduates making up the majority of employees, central locations that offer good connectivity to the public transport network, particularly the subway in Bucharest, are in high demand. Closeness to university campuses is another plus, say consultants.

Office buildings also need to meet strict technical specifications, they add. “The buildings should provide excellent technical specifications and the capacity to sustain 24 hour a day, 7 day a week, 365 day a year continuous activity for operations that involve different work shifts,” Tal Roma, development manager at AFI Europe Romania, told BR.

Moreover, outsourcing companies generally require large offices to accommodate an increased headcount, which makes business parks the first choice for many players, Mihai Paduroiu, head of the office agency with CBRE, told BR. Office buildings located in such business parks offer a large floor plan that makes space easier to customize according to tenants’ requirements. Tenants also have the option to lease additional space as they expand their business without breaking their operations into two separate buildings, he added. Moreover, business parks have the benefit of larger green areas as well as a wide variety of services such as restaurants, he went on.

An office project should not only meet all these requirements, it should also be able to do it at a competitive price in order to secure a large tenant such as an outsourcing player, argue industry representatives. “Most potential tenants have similar requirements

The entry of large multinational companies such as outsourcing companies on the local market has brought about the growth of the local office market and has been acting as a driver for change.

This has been forcing developers to constantly invest in delivering better quality projects and upgrading older ones. As a result, most of the office projects being developed this year in Bucharest and the main regional cities are class A projects that meet requirements such as a good location, large surface areas and the latest technical specifications. And all this comes at what consultants call competitive costs.

So what makes the difference between one such project and another?

The quality of the services provided by those who manage an office building, thinks businessman Ovidiu Sandor. He has a strong background in the real estate sector, having developed the City Business Centre office project in Timisoara, which he sold to NEPI in early 2012 for an estimated EUR 90 million. He is also involved in another office project – The Office – in partnership with the real estate investment fund in Cluj-Napoca and has recently announced that he will invest in a residential and office project in Timisoara. “The differences between one building and another one are not that significant for

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

Developers across the field boast of having secured important leasing deals with outsourcing companies over the past 12 months.

So far this year Immofinanz has leased office space and renewed existing deals for a total of 37,000 sqm in seven of its local office projects. Recent agreements include contracts with outsourcing tenants such as S&T in Iride

Number of employees in the outsourcing sector on the rise Outsourcing companies employ some 37,000 people in Bucharest alone, according to CBRE data. The real estate services firm expects this to go up by at least 10-15 percent this year given the number of requests coming from companies looking to set up operations on the local market, said Paduroiu.

Information technology outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) companies have the strongest presence in Bucharest, representing 65 percent of 145 outsourcing companies taken into account by CBRE. The typical number of employees varies between 270 for an ITO up to 500 for a BPO, with such firms employing together 24,000 people in Bucharest. Another 23 percent constitute shared service centers (SSC) and the remaining 12 percent are R&D companies.

Dropped ceilings lose popularity

Business Park and Wizrom in S-Park.

The most recent deals signed by Portland Trust have been with Oracle for 24,000 sqm in Floreasca Park and 20,000 sqm in Oregon Park, Allianz, which leased 4,000 sqm, and Kellogg's with another 4,000 sqm also in Floreasca Park.

Elsewhere, AFI Park 4&5, the latest development phase of AFI Europe’s office project in the Cotroceni area, has reached an occupancy rate of over 70 percent after securing deals with Cameron, SII Romania, Ortec Central & Eastern Europe, FotoNation, Telus International and Veeam Software, all companies providing outsourcing services either to third parties or as internal departments within their multinational group of companies, according to company data.

In the meantime, new projects are being developed. Vastint has two major

office developments underway in Bucharest – Timpuri Noi Square, located in District 3, which will feature up to 100,000 sqm of class A office and retail space, and Business Garden Bucharest, located in District 6, which will add up to 41,000 sqm of class A office and retail space to the market. Outside the capital, Sandor has recently announced plans to develop a new office project in Timisoara, which will be rolled out in three phases. The developer estimates that the first leasable spaces will be finished in the first quarter of 2018 and construction works are slated to start this autumn. The offices will be developed on a 5 hectare plot of land in Timisoara, where the businessman is also planning to build a residential project that will feature some 1,200 apartments. simona.bazavan@business-review.ro

Photo: SII Romania office in Afi Park

New kids on the block

Photo: Telus office in Afi Park

come under consideration by prospective tenants, added Panait.

All this and the fact that outsourcing companies are dynamic businesses mean that developers and landlords need to be increasingly flexible in relation to their tenants, particularly outsourcing companies.

Indeed, a focus on offering quality services and flexibility has become the differentiator on an increasingly competitive market, developers across the board agree. “I would say that, alongside an excellent location and good transport connections, flexibility has Outsourcing companies opt for flexible office layouts and natural light become the most important feature outsourcing companies look for. This can be explained through the complex nature of their business – the same company can offer more than one type of service, via multiple teams. This translates into a diverse range of office needs, which can only be answered by a welldesigned space and a flexible landlord,” said Visoianu.

Flexibility in relation to tenants may come in the form of being able to offer them more space when and if they tenants need it, but also flexibility in negotiating leasing contracts. One effect of this year’s bigger new stock on the market that all consultants agree upon is that owing to the increased competition, prospective tenants from all industries have more leverage in negotiating with Games and recreational rooms help attract and keep employees happy their future landlords. The gap between headline rents and net rents could go up as an effect, and even though pundits don’t foresee an increase in average rents, developers will have to focus on offering prospective tenants incentive packages in order to secure a lease. That could include perks such as free months or footing the bill for fit-out costs, say consultants.

Photo: SII Romania office in Afi Park

a tenant from a technical point of view, but the quickness with which a request is met will make the difference,” he told BR. As the working environment has become a key factor in employee recruitment and retention, companies have started paying a great deal of attention to the office selection process, becoming savvier clients, thinks Antoniu Panait, managing director, Vastint Romania. The developer is presently working on two office projects in the capital, Timpuri Noi Square and Business Garden Bucharest. “Beyond the practical assessment concerning location accessibility and ease of transportation, energy efficiency, optimized costs, efficient floor layouts and high-standard finishing materials, a more natural, flexible indoor environment has been added to the equation,” he told BR. The tendency is to bring flexibility and personality to the office environment by creating customized, adaptable spaces and conveying diversity through out-of-the-box interior design, he added. “We have noticed that multinational companies, including those that offer outsourcing services, are importing the design of the offices from the global network, but at the same time, they are personalizing the ideas to fit the local culture. In general, the spaces are bright, with plenty of light and touches of color in accordance with the company corporate identity,” added Roma.

As a result, today’s offices look very much different from a few years ago and particularly in the case of outsourcing companies they come with new features. “More recently companies have become more demanding when it comes to the facilities offered by office buildings. To their list of demands there have been added new elements such as bicycle racks, green certifications, canteens, shower facilities, gym and supermarket access, either in the building where they have their office or within walking distance,” said Cetatoiu.

Games and recreational rooms, flexible office layout, outdoor socializing and green areas or roofs are a few other perks that can help attract and keep employees happy at work and therefore

OUTSOURCING 11

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12 OUTSOURCING

Accenture plans further local expansion In an interview with BR, Razvan Patrunoiu, country managing director at Accenture Romania, says the company is looking to reach close to 3,000 employees across its five locations in the country, in a bid to support the growth of its business lines. He adds that Accenture’s Romanian operations are strategic for the company at a global level, and the skilled pool of talent present here makes the country an attractive destination for multinational companies in the BPO segment. enues, cost reduction, working capital improvements.

So, the first trend is moving away from processes that are purely linked with costs to the ones focusing on the value delivered to the clients.

The second important trend is related to technology, which is everywhere in today’s business. At Accenture, we don’t even call it BPO anymore, but Operations, because at the end of the day it gathers BPO, infrastructure technology, security and cloud. So, we are seeing more technology being embedded in the services.

∫ OVIDIU POSIRCA What are Accenture Romania’s business objectives for this year?

If I were to summarize, our key objective for this year and going forward is related to the growth of the business.

When I say the growth of the business, it’s not necessarily linked to the number of employees and turnover. It’s about how we diversify our portfolio of services, which is very important for us.

Accenture globally, and here in Romania, has a unique portfolio of services, starting with consulting, strategy, digital, technology and operations to business process outsourcing. We constantly diversify the portfolio in each of those business lines.

What are the main challenges and opportunities in the three divisions – consulting, technology solutions and BPO? The challenges are different from one business line to another. If you look at the consulting division, the main challenge is the power of the local economy, more precisely the purchasing power.

We, as Accenture globally, regionally and in Romania, are focusing on large projects, so for us it’s key to identify those large opportunities together with our clients. Here, a fact is that the Romanian market is not that mature, not that developed yet, so for us it’s a challenge to identify those opportunities.

If you look at technology and process outsourcing, these business lines are much more anchored in the global economic reality. We have big international clients that we are serving from Romania so the model is different and there the highest challenge would probably be the ability of the market to offer talent and skilled resources.

We are not talking only about junior people or graduates. We need experts in these fields and Romania, considering the evolution of the educational system, is for sure an interesting market, with high potential. On the other hand though, it needs further improvements to be able to meet the demand from international businesses.

What are your investment plans? Are you looking to hire new people this year?

The trend for us over the last three to four years has been continuous doubledigit growth. This trend will continue in 2016, when we will probably have 25-30 percent growth (in headcount e.n.) in Romania. We have just exceeded 2,700 employees in Romania, in five locations: Bucharest, Timisoara, Iasi, Cluj and Targu Mures. We will reach close to 3,000 people by the end of this year. We are always looking to grow fairly proportionally across all locations where we are present and in all our business lines.

What’s Accenture Romania’s business footprint in the firm’s international operations?

Accenture Romania is part of what we call a truly global company. Around the world, Accenture has about 375,000 people so it’s a very large corporation.

In the past few years and going forward, Romania continues to be one of the key growth pillars of the organization – in Europe, for sure, but also at the global level.

Accenture in Romania sees the busi-

ness as a strategic one for various reasons. It’s a location that comes with an interesting talent pool in terms of people and resources. We continue to be competitive from a cost perspective, which is an important element, although the importance of this aspect has been decreasing in the past few years.

Accenture is focusing rather on the quality of services it provides to the clients and Romania is well positioned to provide high quality services.

What has been the evolution of services required by clients in the BPO segment?

What trends are you registering in this segment?

Accenture is one of the global market leaders, with high and recognized expertise and therefore it is leading the industry in a certain direction: we have already moved from transactional services to really high-end services. For example, if you look at the value chain of our services, you will see that we concentrate on how we deliver more value to our clients – it’s about increased rev-

What is Accenture’s strategy in terms of talent management and employee engagement?

First of all we are a services company, so obviously people are our key resource.

Therefore, attracting the talents from the market, developing those talents inside the company and retaining them for the longest period of time possible is definitively one of our key strategies.

In the recruitment process, we tend to be very strict, because we want to attract only the best candidates on the market and we want to make them even better. That’s our key focus. Then, their development comes on one hand with all the programs we have in the company: classroom sessions organized in Romania or online sessions in a huge virtual library available at global level; but at the end of the day the development of our people comes together with the growth opportunities that we can offer them.

Being a company that is constantly growing and attracting new clients, obviously this also offers opportunities for growth. Our employees are able to get exposure to and experience all kinds of projects and afterwards they are basically able to grow in the company. The development is tightly linked to the employees’ retention aspect.

There is no better retention tool than the development opportunities that you offer, especially to the young generation, which is looking for a sense of progression, a sense of learning. We are able to offer that, which is one of our key differentiators on the local market. ovidiu.posirca@business-review.ro

14 COVER STORY

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Ringing the changes: an Olympic panorama In more than a century of Olympics, during which Romania has participated in 19 Summer Olympics, and 20 Winter Games, the country’s haul stands at 302 medals: 88 golds, 94 silvers, and 120 bronzes. Its traditional sports are athletics, boxing, canoeing, fencing, gymnastics, Greco-Roman wrestling, judo, kayaking, shooting, swimming and weightlifting. So what will Rio 2016 bring?

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COVER STORY 15

Before 1976, no male or female had ever received a perfect score in any Olympic gymnastics event. The 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci dazzled the judges in Montreal to the point where they couldn't help but give her a perfect 10.

golden era of gymnastics and created medal in its winter sports history.

With local gymnastics fans still reeling Romania's most successful Olympic Another living legend is sprint ca- from the national women’s team’s faillegacy, but bad luck and senior ath- noeist Ivan Patzaichin who, in Munich ure to qualify for the Olympic Games A delegation of 108 Romanian athletes letes’ medical problems meant it was in 1972, finished the qualification se- in Brazil, pundits are asking what went is readying itself to head to Brazil for not to be. Romanian gymnastics will ries with a broken paddle. Having wrong.

“Rio Olympic Arena was a cauldron the Summer Olympic Games which be represented only at individual level competed in five Olympics, he is a will take place between August 5 and by three-time Olympic champion four-time gold medalist, being dubbed of contrasting emotions this Sunday (17 April), as thousands of spectators 21 in Rio de Janiero. Romania will par- Catalina Ponor, four-time Olympic “the admiral of the Romanian fleet”.

In Montreal in 1976, Nadia Co- cheered on the Brazilian women's ticipate in 16 sports: artistic gymnas- medalist Marian Dragulescu and Antics, athletics, boxing, canoeing, sprint, drei Muntean, who was recently added maneci achieved perfection and artistic gymnastics team to first place road cycling, fencing, handball, judo, to the list. Two-time world all-around crowned a golden era for world gym- and Olympic qualification but rhythmic gymnastics, rowing, shoot- medalist Larisa Iordache has been nastics, notching up the first perfect watched in disbelief as traditional powerhouse Romania crashed out. (… ing, swimming, table tennis, promised a trip to Rio de Janeiro as an ten in the history of the sport.

Another role model is Elisabeta ) It was a very different story for the weightlifting and wrestling. The final alternate.

Ponor was selected as the flag Lipa, currently the minister of Youth Romanian team, who left the arena in number of local participants hangs in the balance, as some Romanian ath- bearer, marking a first in the history of and Sports, who took part in six con- tears without talking to the media. For letes were caught doping and their sit- Romanian Olympics, as no gymnast secutive Olympics. The holder of five a team that has won a medal at every Olympic titles, Lipa was declared the Olympic Games since 1976, it was a difuation is uncertain, with a USD has previously had the honor. “best rower of the 20th century” by the ficult blow to take. The Romanians 100,000 fine per doped athlete caught were unable to recover from a poor in Rio. Romania’s living Olympic Canoeing International Federation. performance on the bars despite the The first Romanian Olympic medal legends was won by the national rugby team, a Lia Manoliu, the only woman to have Taking a tumble: gymnastics best efforts of five-time Olympic bronze at the Summer Olympics in led the Olympic Committee in Roma- failure rewrites history in medallist Catalina Ponor”, was the official take on the Rio 2016 news portal.

Paris in 1924. Romania’s high water nia, is a popular figure both nationally Rio mark came in Los Angeles, in 1984, and internationally. She won a gold when the team won 53 medals (20 medal at the Summer Olympics in golds, 16 silvers and 17 bronzes).

Mexico (1968), and bronze at the SumBut expectations for Rio are not so mer Olympics in Rome (1960) and high. Both Elisabeta Lipa, minister of Tokyo (1964) in discus, and particiYouth and Sports, and Alin Petrache, pated in six consecutive Olympics president of the Romanian Olympic (from Helsinki in 1952, to Munich in and Sports Committee (COSR), are bet- 1972), earning her the Guinness World ting on a tally of six to seven medals, Record for the longest continuous parespecially in handball and fencing, ticipation. where local teams are world leaders.

At the 1952 Summer Olympics, Iosif Furthermore, for the first time in Sarbu became the first Romanian history, the country that made the per- Olympic champion, in shooting. The fect ten in gymnastics world famous first local woman champion was will not be sending a gymnastics Iolanda Balas in the high jump, a dissquad to the Olympics. Romanian tinction achieved at the 1960 Summer women will not only not challenge for Olympics in Rome. Balas was also the a medal in the team and all-around first sportswoman in Romania to win competition at the Games, they won't a gold medal in two consecutive be represented in these competitions Olympics (Rome and Tokyo, four years at all. There were high expectation for later). At the 1968 Winter Olympics in Rio, especially in the context of the Grenoble, the bobsleigh team com40th anniversary of Nadia Comaneci's posed of Ion Panturu and Nicolae Neahistoric perfect ten that ushered in the goe won bronze, Romania’s only *according to the Court of Auditors Report 2013

∫ OANA VASILIU

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16 COVER STORY

and Silvia Zarzu. The top Romanian gymnast of the moment, Larisa Iordache, couldn’t compete in Rio due to a broken finger. Iordache, who won bronze in the individual competition of the World Championship last year, will not be at the Olympics. The men’s team also failed to qualify. They finished the tournament in fifth place, after Germany, France, Ukraine, and the Netherlands. However, Marian Dragulescu will represent Romania in the men’s gymnastics as he had already qualified individually.

Romanian female gymnasts have participated in every Olympic Games since 1952 except for 1968. So far, they have won 62 medals – 12 in team allaround, 11 in individual all-around, 10 in balance beam, 13 in floor exercise, 11 in vault, and 5 in uneven bars. Also, Romania has medaled in the team allaround in every Summer Olympics since 1976, winning gold in 1984, 2000, and 2004.

Who is to blame? The Guardian thinks that other countries have simply upped their game: “As Romania’s star has fallen, new countries have risen to take its place. In 2015, Great Britain won its first ever team medal – a bronze – at the world championships. (…) Italy has placed as high as fourth in the past. And the Netherlands will be sending its first full team to the Olympics since 1976 by virtue of their eighth place finish in 2015.

McCharles (e.n.: Rick McCharles, a former Canadian judge and coach) conceded that the 2016 Olympics will probably not be as exciting without Romania. (…) “When new nations challenge USA, China, and Russia, we’ll be able to move on to the new normal,” he said. Forty years after Nadia, the ‘new normal’ has started – an Olympic Games without Romanian gymnastics”.

Finger crossed for women’s handball team

Catalina Ponor is the first gymnast since Daniela Silivas (1988) to win three gold medals at a single Olympics and her beam routine has a D-score of 6.5, which is one of the highest in the world

The Guardian headline “Romania's Olympic gymnastics failure: where did it all go wrong?”, USA Today’s “Romania fails to qualify full team in women's gymnastics for Rio Olympics” and the Daily Mail’s “Gymnastics – Romania fail to make Rio Olympics team cut” were the talk of news outlets around the world. After four decades of Olympic glory, the Romanian women's gymnastics team will not be at the Summer Games in Rio. The team — which has medaled in every Olympics since 1976 — missed the top four in a test event back in April.

The first event was the uneven bars,

considered one of the weaknesses for the team across the board. Diana Bulimar, one of the stars, fell. On the beam, where Romania has fared well, there were two falls. The poor performance continued on the floor and vault. The inevitable happened: Romania failed to make the top four. In the past, the team would not even have been attempting to qualify for the Olympics right before the competition: its place was already secured in the previous championships by dint of ranking in the top eight countries.

But the writing has been on the wall. For the past couple of years, seri-

ous errors, along with weak performances in Romania’s traditional strong suits, the floor and vault, have seen the team plummet down the standings.

The rot set in back in 2010, when for the first time ever, the team failed to medal. Legendary coaches Octavian Bellu and Mariana Bitang were brought back, but the damage was already underway. And what is worse, international critics say the Romanians are unlikely to return to their place in the sport’s higher echelons.

The team was made up of Diana Bulimar, Maria Holbura, Anamaria Ocolisan, Catalina Ponor, Dora Vulcan

Across all sporting disciplines in Romania, the national women's handball team was the first to make it through to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. In March, Romania ended the pre-Olympic qualifying tournament at the top of its group. From Europe, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands and France also qualified, alongside world champions Norway.

The team is thought to stand a real chance of reaching the Olympic podium. At the World Championship in December, in Denmark, the Romanian women’s handball team walked away with a bronze medal.

With no fewer than 63 goals on her record sheet, Cristina Neagu was the World Championship's top scorer, and was also named the competition's best player.

This generation of Romanian women handball players is held by many to be the best in the last 50 years. “If we take a look at the Romanian national team's results, today's team is only matched by the

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COVER STORY 17

Romanian Cristina Neagu, 27, who currently performs at ŽRK Budućnost Podgorica won the Mizuno Female World Handball Player 2015 award, curtesy of the votes of 19 members of the international jury of handball journalists and fans.

*according to the National Institute of Statistics - data from 2014 **according to GSP newspaper lineup who won the world title in 1962. However, we should say that in Rio, Cristina Neagu and her teammates stand a real chance of winning the first Olympic medal for Romanian women's handball. So far the Romanian national squad's career-best at the Olympics was the fourth place they grabbed in Montreal in 1976,” reported Radio Romania International.

The last time the country’s women’s handball team competed at the Olympics was in 2008, when they finished seventh.

Basketball hoop-la: pride and prejudice in national anthem row In January, a row erupted following a national basketball competition, when two Romanian teams – Sepsi, the women’s team based in Sfantu Gheorghe, Covasna county, a former Hungarian region, and U Cluj, the women’s team in Cluj-Napoca – became embroiled in a major misunderstanding over national symbols such as flag and anthem. Sepsi’s fans sang the Szecklerland anthem, in the Hungarian language, immediately after the Roman-

ian anthem, when U Cluj players had already gone to warm up.

Romanian laws do not permit the singing of the national anthem before domestic competitions, meaning that both teams broke the rules. Elisabeta Lipa, minister of youth and sports, reported the issue, but the Romanian Basketball Federation dismissed it.

Following the row, PSD party members Liviu Dragnea, Florin Iordache, Marian Neacşu, Florin-Costin Paslaru, Valeriu Zgonea, Mihai Fifor and Gabriela Firea proposed a draft bill to complete

the article 10 of Law no. 75/1994 regarding the flying of the Romanian flag, the national anthem and the use of Romanian emblems by public authorities and institutions. They want to make the national anthem mandatory in stadiums and sports centers, in official sports competitions and in the national final stages for all categories. The draft bill has so far been approved by the Legal, Appointments, Discipline, Immunities and Validations Committee. editorial@business-review.ro

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18 COVER STORY

Exercising good judgement Although Romanians are generally less physically active than their counterparts in Northern Europe, more are beginning to exercise. BR takes a look at the regional picture, and hears from members of the local business community about their sporting achievements and how the lessons they learn from sport translate in the office and boardroom. ∫ OANA VASILIU For the last few years, the increasing number of marathons and other such sporting events makes one wonder whether Romanians have finally started to understand the importance and benefits of doing physical activity.

According to the results of a 2014 Eurobarometer survey on sport and physical activity, 59 percent of EU citizens never or seldom exercise or do sport, and it’s a similar story in Romania.

Sport or physical activity at home is popular in Eastern European countries including Romania, with 53 percent of regional respondents to the survey saying they exercise, though only 6 percent use health or fitness centers. The lowest figures for membership of a sports club are in Romania (1 percent), Bulgaria (2 percent) and Poland (3 percent). Furthermore, the Ministry of Finance reported in September 2015 that Romanians spend just over RON 143 million in fitness centers, spread across the 500 wellness locations nationwide.

Although the nation is not as physically active as Northern Europe, where above 70 percent of people exercise or do sport, the number of local races is rising every year, for children, amateurs, professionals and even runners with special needs. Moreover, 47 percent of Romanians say they are motivated to improve their health.

And this motivation can be seen during sports events organized nationwide, where many participants sign up to support or advertise an NGO or a cause while competing.

Bogdan Cioc, consultant manager, SAP

is surprising and gives everyone confidence. I wanted to bring this positive mental attitude and this kind of trust to my team. And, of course, I try to incorporate this creative mentality in the way I do my job myself.

Business lessons learned from sport: The scientific planning of activities.

Weekends are the time you spend with family, but also when amateur competitions take place. Free time is so scarce and precious, so it must be

managed carefully.

Mihai Cristea, head of department – direct sales division, Omniasig Vienna Insurance Group Competitions: I have taken part in over 50 athletics competitions in the past six years, the most significant being the Berlin Marathon 2014 and the Olympus Marathon 2016 in Greece.

The latter involved running 44 kilometers in temperatures ranging from

Businesspeople doing sport Bogdan Cioc, consultant manager, SAP Competitions: Transfier triathlon, Triathlon Challenge Mamaia, Bucharest International Marathon, Wintertri marathon on sprint distances, half-marathon Baneasa Trail Run, Bucharest International HalfMarathon Relationship between sport and professional career: I wanted to give the team the discipline of regular exercise and the trust that you can achieve goals that seem impossible at first Mihai Cristea, head of department – direct sales division, Omniasig Vienna Inglance. The concrete realization that surance Group impossible goals are not so untenable

20°C (start) to -3°C and then to 35°C. Relationship between sport and professional career: My life as head of department within the direct sales division at Omniasig Vienna Insurance Group and my life as a marathon runner are both about putting in a lot of work. What else do they have in common? Pretty much everything, as they both entail strategy, a certain technique, intensive training and preparation, and the ability to prevent unforeseen events. In my professional life and in my life as a sportsman, I follow the same steps. First of all, I scan my own abilities, which, in sports, means a medical checkup, in order to make sure that I am fit to handle competition. Afterwards, I try to set realistic objectives. In terms of a marathon, that means to finish the race, not necessarily to be the first to finish it, but to improve my marathon time. Insofar as business is concerned, my objective is to be efficient. Moreover, I tend to plan my actions carefully, both in my work and in sport – the amount of training I do and the intensity are carefully thought of in advance. Whether it is a marathon or everyday work – be it contracts, negotiations or any other task – when I enter a competition, I give it all I’ve got, because any competition involves concentration and putting to good use all one’s knowledge.

Business lessons learned from sport: As there is no sports club that would plan all the details for a marathon, I had to rely on the planning and organizational abilities I acquired while working at Omniasig. I created a whole training program for myself – from February until May I ran 60 kilometers per week and afterwards, in June, 75 kilometers per week in Greece, prior to the marathon – as well as undertaking a nutritional scheme adapted to this very competition. I also had a race strategy that I thoroughly followed, as I believe that “whoever does not train for success trains for failure”.

Gabriel Dumitrescu, large accounts division manager, business to business department Orange Romania Competitions: Road Grand Tour, duathlon competitions and marathons such as the Bucharest Half Marathon Relationship between sport and pro-

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fessional career: Any evolved society considers physical activity and sports to be a normal part of everyday life regardless of age. Today, for many of us, daily life and professional life mean much the same. This is the natural connection that I see between sports and business. From sports I have learned to be prepared and rigorously follow the path set out to achieve a specific goal. I have also learned to do things with pleasure, even when you may not have the mental state or adequate physical condition or the weather outside would persuade you to stay home. Also, understanding that in a competition there are rules and competitors, and you need to both know and respect them.

Business lessons learned from sport: I’ve learned that everything in business is the result of the team and the way in which its members work together and complement and reinforce each other. I’ve learned that you have to know where you want to go, but at the same time pay attention to details that can influence that way. I’ve learned that if you properly prepare, success comes naturally.

Alex Filip, senior events and sponsorship specialist, Orange Romania Competitions: Mamaia Triathlon, 15km race in Valencia, Transfier (half-Ironman distances), Bucharest Marathon, Road Grand Tour Seciu and Sinaia.

The challenge will be the Half Iron Man in Budapest this year, which is 1.9 km swimming, 90 km biking and 21 km running.

Relationship between sport and professional career: I think that business and sport have a two-way relationship and you can move any of the values from one side to the other. I have brought from sports into everyday life rigor and respect for rules and for the competitor, organization and punctuality.

Business lessons learned from sport: Teamwork, the endurance to start again and to perform under time pressure, meaning the deadline, are some of the things I transfer. At the same time, both in sport and in work I set goals that I manage to achieve through training. And at the end of a project, like at the end of a competition, praise and boosting give me energy to perform again.

Thomas C. Knobel, founder & CEO Nobel, inventor & founder of WowApp Competitions: I started playing table tennis aged 12 and my highest achievement was to be captain of my state’s championship team in Switzerland at 16. After a roughly 20-year break, I started playing again in Romania, competing in Sunday tournaments in Bucharest and nationally in the Romanian Amateur league.

Relationship between sport and professional career: Even when all the odds or everyone is against me, I don’t

COVER STORY 19 give up because until it’s over, there is always a chance to succeed.

Business lessons learned from sport: Compete hard and stay fair. Fair play is the way to go and in the long run will make me a better athlete and leader.

Dragos Roua, founder and CEO, Connect Hub Competitions: I finished my first marathon in 2012, my first official ultra-marathon in 2015 (Ultrabalaton 222 km), and my first 48-hour race this year in Athens. I have run marathons in Vienna, Nice, Rome and, of course, Bucharest. In 2015, along with Andrei Rosu and a few more "trimbulinzi", I ran from Comarnic to Bucharest on the DN1, 101 kilometers. In fall 2015, I finished the simple ultra-marathon Transmaraton in eight hours (64 kilometers on Transfagarasan Road).

Relationship between sport and professional career: Endurance running taught me to have patience in business. Just like in an ultra-marathon, pain courses through the body, today you can have problems with suppliers, tomorrow with customers, the next day with human resources. The important thing is to have patience and treat each problem in context, not to lose your temper. Also, probably the best thing learnt was “locus of control”, translated as the ability to correctly evaluate the potential of any situation, due to the long-term objectives.

In other words, the "locus of control" tells you whether the pain you are experiencing is transient and unimportant, or if it is serious, and will have profound consequences for your health on the long term. In business, "locus of control" can often mean the ability to remain in a market where no one "sees" profit until it matures. Or it can mean the ability to give up a line of your business, because staying there could generate problems in other parts of the business in the long term. Last but not least, the competition in this endurance running world is with yourself, not with others.

within the firm, but also with PwC firms from other countries in our annual football competition. I took up running five years ago because I wanted to improve my lifestyle a bit. I started to take better care of my diet and to run several times per week. I like to run early in the morning. It gives me the energy boost that I need in order keep up with my busy and sometimes hectic daily schedule. Regular running helped me get back in shape. I lost some weight and started to really feel good in my body, full of energy and healthy. Not to mention that I have time to go through the agenda of the day ahead of me.

Business lessons learned from sport: I think that there are a lot of lessons to be learned from practicing sports, lessons that are helpful in general, not just in one’s professional life. First, that hard work does pay off and that you can’t take a shortcut to success.

No matter how talented you are it requires work and practice, a lot of prac-

Gabriel Dumitrescu, large accounts division manager, business to business department Orange Romania

Alex Filip, senior events and sponsorship specialist, Orange Romania

Ionut Simion, country managing partner, PwC Romania, and president of AmCham Romania Competitions: At first, I did not have a precise goal in my mind in terms of long-distance races. But then I wanted to prove to myself that I could finish a long-distance competition and so I started with a 10 km run, then a half-marathon, and then in September 2014 I completed my first marathon in Berlin. By now, I have run many half marathons not only in Bucharest but also in Warsaw and Vienna, and I plan to continue with Tokyo and London.

Relationship between sport and professional career: I have always done some kind of sporting activity, mostly football with my PwC colleagues. I used to play for the firm’s football team, competing in tournaments both

Thomas C. Knobel, founder & CEO Nobel, inventor & founder of WowApp

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20 COVER STORY

Ionut Simion, country managing partner, PwC Romania, and president of AmCham Romania

tice to be successful. In these last five years I have understood the difference between: “I am working hard in order to be happy” versus “I am happy therefore I work hard”. My preference clearly is for the second option. Second, that no obstacle is too great if you approach it correctly and methodically. It is like eating an elephant: all at once is impossible but try a slice every day and you will see the results. If there is a will, you will for sure find a way.

Dan Stefan, managing partner, Autonom Competitions: I started to be physically active in 2009, along with my brother.

My main activity is running, but I also cycle, swim, climb, trek and play tennis. I have run five marathons and many half marathons. In the last year I’ve also climbed Kilimanjaro and Toubkal.

Relationship between sport and professional career: Psychology is crucial: if we understand how our brain

works, if we are scholars of behavior, we can go far, together. Hard can be fun. A challenge is often a good motivator, if you face it with the right approach. In sport and in business, we face barriers, new levels that are hard to reach. To do that, you need a good plan, willpower, adaptation and patience. No shortcuts: the real satisfaction of an achievement is when it has been done with fair play. Helping other people grow is not only a big source of happiness but also a great way to learn and succeed. Failure is a great teacher, progress is a great friend and success is a dangerous ally. Being physically and intellectually active is a life journey, there is no final destination; it’s about the next competition, the next turnover threshold. The goal for a company should be to strive to become a better version of itself – and the same goes for an individual.

Business lessons learned from sport: The first is the growth mentality, as our potential is way beyond our currently perceived limits. Many times over, I did things in business and in sports that I would have never imagined possible. The second is about sustainable growth. A business organization has a natural, healthy growth rate, and so does the body. The best progress is gradual. Each time I rushed things they became unbalanced, with lots of drawbacks. editorial@business-review.ro

Dragos Roua, founder and CEO, Connect Hub

Dan Stefan, managing partner, Autonom

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COVER STORY 21

Getting the student body active In five years, Adrian Socaciu, president of the Student Sport Association, has got over 10,000 students to take part in university competitions in such sports as football, tennis, table tennis, chess, 3x3 basketball, running and handball. Is there a recipe to get more young people into sport? He shared his views with Business Review.

Who supports university students’ mass sports initiatives? Is it difficult to find partners to organize events?

It is not always easy to organize sports activities, but following a serious management plan carried out with passion, we can achieve it, a step towards improving performance. Our activities are conducted with the support of Tiriac Auto, Coca Cola, Cris-Tim, Fan Courier, Banca Transilvania, the National AntiDoping Agency, Hyundai, Trinity and Ostrov Domains. The private sector is involved in supporting sports activities, but both we and our private partners need predictability and a vision for this area. At the time being, Romania has no vision or strategy for university sports.

What should the Ministry of Youth and Sports (MTS) do to counter physical inactivity, especially among young people?

It should increase the number of hours of sport in school curricula, establish a competitive system of university sports in partnership with other ministries and run communication campaigns to promote the benefits of mass sports to the young.

∫ OANA VASILIU Over 10,000 university students are currently participating in sport and taking part in competitions. What is your view on this?

The undergraduate system organizes sports activities for the short term, with the only long-term competition being the National School Sports Olympics with its local, county / municipal, regional and national phases. However, the number of participants nationwide is low compared to the number of students (editor’s note: over 3.2 million students in the undergraduate system), which shows that one hour per week is not enough for developing and implementing sports education.

the total number in comparison with the overall population (270,000) is worryingly low. However, our figure relates to documented athletes. We also have to take into consideration other mass sports activities, such as marathons and cross-country, which have a large number of participants.

How do you see sports education in Romania?

Without a clear strategy that includes investments in current infrastructure and future improvements such as renovations, repairs, development, human resource training, mediumand long-term goals, and attracting financial resources from private companies, giving them the opportunity to invest, the system can’t function. Currently, this is a major problem in organizing the sports activities that could Which sports are most popular?

According to recent public statements, promote sports education.

From my point of view, Romanian most students play team sports like football, basketball and handball, but sports needs a plan for the next 20

years at all levels from pre-school to university. We must implement in society the reality of sports education, from the idea of investing in your health to self-improvement, helping people to be disciplined, competitive and make good professional choices. At present, successes in Romanian sports are the results of hard-working individual (athletes, coaches, parents) who put in passion and dedication, not a system implementing good sports education and motivating children, young people and adults in a logical and coherent way.

Training young people through sports and non-formal education, teaching them the values of sport, and later having 10-15 percent of them going on to compete so they can represent the country in international competitions in few years’ time – this is an issue to be taken seriously because our investment in youth is an investment in our future as a society.

If the MTS wasn’t in charge of sports facilities, do you think that the local authorities would be able to improve and maintain them?

In terms of infrastructure, meaning sports facilities, the situation is pretty poor and the MTS is not able to invest in more than small repairs, because of its budget, which does not allow it to "fix" anything now or over the next four years. If there were decentralization, I am confident that local authorities could improve these sports by funding them, through their own income or with European funds. We must think positively and accept the fact that a ministry cannot manage a large number of sports facilities, especially when we are also talking about the human resources for their maintenance. Most importantly, these sports facilities should maintain their purpose under current physical education and sports laws, especially so young people can have a place to spend their free time in an enjoyable and healthy way. editorial@business-review.ro

22 HEALTHCARE

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

Team Net wins tender for maintenance of controversial health insurance IT systems Team Net International has been awarded two contracts for the provision of maintenance, helpdesk and technical support services for the IT system behind the National Health Insurance Card (CEAS) and IT Health Insurance Platform (PIAS). The winner was selected based on the lowest price criterion, after the National Health Insurance House (CNAS) examined all the offers.

HP Romania and Novensys Corporation, with Siveco Romania as subcontractor.

The value of the contract was over RON 87.6 million, not including VAT. According to the survey, 62 percent of doctors believe that the IT system must be improved, nearly a quarter have called for the employment of technical personnel and 11 percent want the time allocated for a consultation to be extended to 20 minutes, according to Agerpres.

Moreover, 58 percent of doctors declared the system jams between one and three times a week, while 52 percent said the blockage can last up to two hours, according to Agerpres.

“When it doesn’t work, we have a big problem. Even though it was not made to function offline, the CNAS found a technical way to allow temporary functioning because the CEAS started to fail more and more often. It is a temporary fix, because it does not work at its full capacity and returns errors,” Alexiu told BR. Approximately 50 percent of the reThe maintenance of the health insurance IT systems, especially that of CEAS, is a controversial subject, after a series of spondents to the survey said that they frequent malfunctions are unable to consult on average with between one and five patients because of the blockage, and 27 percent said CEAS, is a controversial subject, after a press. ∫ oTILIA HARAGA A survey carried out between May 7 they cannot see between 5 and 10 paseries of frequent malfunctions have often made it impossible for doctors to and 31 by the Doctors’ College in tients.

At the same time, 49 percent said Bucharest found that the CEAS IT sys“For the CEAS maintenance, the win- do their job.

“The most frequent problems are re- tem would fail as much as three times a that the blockage to the system had ning offer was RON 14.8 million, not inprevented them from issuing prescripcluding VAT (compared to a maximum lated to the optimum functioning of the week, according to Agerpres.

“There were dozens of occasions tions to up to five patients, while 30 estimated value of RON 18.8 million, no IT system. The CEAS (national card sysVAT), while for the PIAS maintenance, tem) is part of the PIAS (IT Health Insur- when the entire PIAS would fall, or just percent said that this was the case for the winning offer was RON 7.5 million ance Platform), which also comprises one of its components. We come across between 5 and 10 patients.

Moreover, 45 percent of the respon(compared to RON 8.4 million). The the DES (Electronic Health File), the most difficulties with the SUI, which two contracts will cover a three-year SIUI (Integrated IT System) and the does not show whether the patient is dents say the services they performed period and will be signed at the end of SIPE (Electronic Prescription System). insured in real time. This affects the en- offline were validated only partially, the timeframe allocated for contesting Each of these has a certain role and they tire functioning of the platform. Those while for 16 percent, they were not valthe procedure (July 11, 2016), if no con- are all inter-connected. In order for all who are in charge of this have made idated at all.

“If we wish to continue consultations, testations are submitted,” said the of these to work optimally, they need to very few adaptations and improvefunction flawlessly, and this does not ments, compared to the repeated feed- we are forced to go offline, but this afCNAS in a statement.

The winner of the contracts must happen,” Dr. Sandra Adalgiza Alexiu, back that has been sent ever since the fects the medical act, the accuracy of the data we use and save, and it makes provide helpdesk, maintenance and vice-president of the National Associa- pilot stage,” complained Alexiu.

She adds that, unfortunately, the in- us vulnerable because we risk some of technical support services for the CEAS tion of Family Medicine, tells BR. IT system, as well as administration, She added, “The CNAS should admit troduction of CEAS was “a very sad mo- the services not only being invalidated, technical support and maintenance that it has big problems, that it cannot ment,” because “CEAS is probably the but also charged, which has already services for the PIAS IT platform, ac- manage or coordinate the optimum most deficient of all the systems.” happened! When the system goes functioning of the IT systems in which Alexiu said, “It interferes with the en- down, the consultations last longer cording to officials.

The list of applicants for the CEAS IT huge sums were invested. No one takes tire system, it turned the SIPE, which than normal, and patients lose patience, system maintenance included Hewlett- responsibility for this failure. There was working very well before the intro- especially since some situations cannot Packard (HP) and IT Capital Manage- hasn’t been maintenance at CEAS for duction of the card, upside down, and be solved offline. Patients must be rement. The other applicants for the PIAS years, and even now, after the tender it caused serious and long-term dam- scheduled, re-called for consultation or IT platform maintenance were Hewlett- has been won, things have not gotten age. This wouldn’t have mattered so hospitalization. The relationship bemuch, had there been an alternative at tween doctor and patient is clearly Packard and Master Technology Sys- better.” under strain,” Alexiu told BR. BR asked the CNAS to comment on the these moments of damage.” tems.

The CEAS contract was awarded in The maintenance of the health in- issue but no answer had been received surance IT systems, especially that of by the time the publication went to April 2012 to the association between otilia.haraga@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

HEALTHCARE 23

Local medical institutions specialize An advanced research & development center in experimental medicine was recently inaugurated in Iasi. Meanwhile, some state hospitals across Romania are making progress in expanding the range of more complex medical services that they offer patients. And the past month has seen a high number of transplants of various organs.

The Emergency Institute for Cardiovascular Conditions and Transplants in Targu-Mures has carried out eight heart transplants this year

the recent period has been particularly rich in transplant medical premieres.

The Emergency Institute for CardioThe advanced research & development vascular Conditions and Transplants in (R&D) center in experimental medicine Targu-Mures has carried out eight heart (CEMEX) aims to increase the quality of transplants this year, which is a record R&D activity in the medical field, im- not only for this medical center, but prove health services and promote eco- also in Romania. “This number has not nomic competition with an impact on been reached for very many years and we are only halfway through the year, the pharma industry.

The total value of the project, which which makes us very glad,” said Dr. Hois co-financed via the European Fund ratiu Suciu, head of the institute’s Carfor Regional Development, is RON 31 diovascular Surgery Clinic, quoted by million. Non-reimbursable financing Agerpres newswire.

“So far, I believe that the activity in covers RON 25 million of the costs, according to Agerpres newswire. The this field has had very good results, and we want this to continue. The problems project was started in March, 2014.

“We often hear resigned voices say- are related to the medical staff, which ing: ‘Research is costly. Where do we is insufficient, and more people must get the money from, especially in Ro- be hired, which depends on the Minmania?’ Nothing could be more wrong. istry of Health. Requests in this sense Research does require investments in- were submitted a long time ago but it deed, but true quality research, an- seems they are destined not to be anchored in the needs of the market, can swered. Also, certain drugs cannot be bring a ten-fold return on the invest- found in the country,” said Suciu.

The institute did not actually ask to ment. We have a real shot at prosperity which is solidly based on the high tech- hire more staff, but to redistribute nology that CEMEX provides, together workers and modify its structure. Howwith the financing opportunities that it ever, even though it is the only institute can access,” said Daniela Drugus, in the country that has carried out heart CEMEX project manager, quoted by transplants this year, the Ministry of Health did not provide an answer, acAgerpres newswire.

July was Organ Donors’ Month and cording to Agerpres.

∫ oTILIA HARAGA

Cardiovascular surgeons in Romania have pleaded for the proper and equal financing of surgeries both in the public and private health system. According to Romanian law, in the case of cardiovascular interventions that cannot be carried out in local public hospitals, the patient can be sent abroad via the E112 form. However, if the respective surgery can be carried out in a Romanian private hospital, the Romanian state does not cover the costs, according to Agerpres.

Cardiovascular surgery costs EUR 7,000 in a private clinic in Romania, while abroad the state would have to pay between EUR 37,000 and EUR 40,000.

At this point, Romania is more than EUR 300 million in debt to clinics abroad, as a result of cases solved with the help of the E112 form.

According to Dr. Catalin Carstoveanu, councilor of the heath minister, 40 percent of children with cardiac problems, out of 900 who need surgery, can be operated on in Romania and abroad.

The Center for Liver Transplant in Iasi was last month the scene of the first liver transplant, carried out by a team of ten doctors. This was the first intervention of its kind in Iasi, two months

after the inauguration of the center, according to Agerpres.

“Iasi has potential. First of all, it benefits from advanced surgery, Secondly there are donors in Moldova,” said Prof.

Dr. Irinel Popescu, of the Fundeni Hospital in Bucharest.

Meanwhile, the first lung harvesting in Transylvania has taken place at the Targu-Mures Emergency County Hospital, where several teams of doctors from Romania and Germany removed the lungs, liver and kidneys from a brain-dead donor. This was the first lung harvesting procedure in Transylvania and the third in Romania.

“The harvesting teams were made up of doctors and auxiliary medical staff from the Targu-Mures Emergency County Hospital, the Cluj-Napoca Urology and Renal Transplant Institute, the Fundeni Clinical Institute in Bucharest and Klinikum der Universität München.

A team of doctors and nurses within the ICU of the Targu-Mures Emergency County Hospital was in charge of preparing and keeping the donor alive, an activity which is extremely important before any harvesting,” said hospital officials.

Another medical premiere took place in Baia-Mare, where the emergency hospital Dr. Constantin Opris harvested a lung for the first time, according to institution officials.

Medical teams from Bucharest and Cluj harvested the heart and the kidney of the donor, while a team made up of three doctors from the AKH Austria harvested the lung.

While heart, liver, kidneys and tissues from donors have been collected before in this hospital over the past three years, this was the first time when a lung was harvested from a brain-dead patient.

There are very few Romanian patients on the waiting list for lung transplants; therefore transplants are carried out abroad, according to the institution.

The Romanian National Transplant Agency has a collaboration contract with Eurotransplant, which stipulates that hospitals in Romania supply lungs for Eurotransplant, so that Romanian patients can undergo transplants in Vienna, according to Agerpres newswire.

According to the most recent statistics from the National Transplant Agency, before the end of 2015, 4,345 patients were waiting for a kidney transplant, 461 for a liver transplant, 127 for a heart transplant while 119 patients were waiting for a pancreas transplant. otilia.haraga@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

24 ENERGY

Brexit could worsen outlook for planned local energy projects

Photo: Mihai Constantineanu

With Romania already struggling to attract investors for large energy projects worth billions of euros, the UK’s vote to exit the European Union might make it even harder for investors looking to venture into the local industry.

Power costs: Two nuclear reactors require investments of at least EUR 6 billion

∫ ovIdIu posIRCA For years, Romania has been trying to find companies willing to build two nuclear reactors at Cernavoda worth at least EUR 6 billion and the new hydro pumped-storage plant Tarnita-Lapustesti which has a price tag of at least EUR 1 billion. Some Chinese private and state-owned firms have now suggested they have the appetite for such investment, but the start of the actual construction stage remains clouded by uncertainty.

Energy production ambitions ‘outdated’?

In late 2015, state-owned nuclear plant operator Nuclearelectrica signed a memorandum of understanding with China General Nuclear Power Corporation, also a state-owned company.

Under the deal, the two firms will set up a project company as a joint venture in which the Chinese firm will hold at least 51 percent. The two nuclear reactors are set to have an installed capacity of 700MW and will use CANDU 6 technology.

In the case of Tarnita, three Chinese

consortiums have got to the pre-qualification stage to build the 1,000 MW plant.

Eric Stab, chairman & CEO, country president Romania & Poland at Engie, the French utility, thinks that the energy sector has changed a lot since the authorities first started to talk about such large projects.

“We’ve moved away from the huge power plants to the far more decentralized generation of energy. This is a general trend, not just in Romania, but everywhere. It is getting increasingly difficult nowadays to build huge power

plants requiring huge investments and this does not of course help the development of Cernavoda reactors 3 and 4 or of Tarnita,” he told BR. The energy executive says that the wholesale prices of electricity have dropped a lot in the country due to the surge in renewable capacities, noting that prices have fallen by 30 percent.

Engie, formerly known as GDF Suez, was part of a consortium that was supposed to build the new reactors at Cernavoda but the deal collapsed after several utilities started to exit the project.

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

Stab says that ultimately, the question is whether Romania actually needs such large projects, and if it would not be better off by taking small steps in the right direction instead of thinking big and risking making a huge mistake.

“To base a business case on potential exports of electricity does not make much sense in a country such as Romania, so the question is does Romania need those projects,” said Stab.

The way in which the authorities handled the process of attracting investors might also be one of the reasons why construction works have not yet started, suggested Miruna Suciu, managing partner at law firm Suciu Popa Attorneys.

“The difficulties with the two nuclear

ENERGY 25 riod of time from a commercial perspective.

Then, there are the challenges related to the legislation. Andreea Mitirita, director, tax consulting at PwC Romania, the professional services firm, says that Romania’s volatile fiscal policies have seen additional taxes imposed in the last few years.

“The financial burden borne by the companies as a result of these policies consists of the 60 percent windfall tax applied on the revenues obtained by gas production companies, the 0.5 percent tax on crude oil sales, and the special construction tax (which should be scrapped from January 2017),” Mitirita told BR.

tariffs schemes and contracts for differences. He also mentioned the green certificates scheme in the renewable sector.

However, investors in the renewable sector fear they will go bankrupt after the government stepped in to lower the support scheme due to spiraling electricity costs for large industrial consumers, but also for households.

“Another possible means to attract investors for the development of large energy projects and implicitly to ensure the security of the electricity supply over the long term could consist of the implementation of capacity remuneration mechanisms (CRM). Under a CRM, in order to ensure demand for electricity is always met, notably during peak consumption periods, generators re-

“To base a business case on potential exports of electricity does not make much sense in a country such as Romania, so the question is does Romania need those projects” says Eric Stab, chairman & CEO, country president Romania & Poland at Engie reactors to be developed by EnergoNuclear at Cernavoda mainly derive from the general Romanian authorities’ inefficient strategy in retaining major investors in the past. The previous Cernavoda project in 2007-2008, which managed to gather several significant international players in the utilities market, was later scrapped in an almost absurd fashion due mainly to the lack of a coherent approach from the authorities’ side. Later on, the authorities tried to resume investment in the project but this unfortunately coincided with a

What sort of project could catch investors’ attention?

Romania certainly needs new production capacities as the large units built during the communist era will gradually have to be taken offline, say pundits.

The challenge, however, is being able to match the needs of the state with the expectations of private investors.

“The Romanian authorities could enhance their efforts to reorganize the coal energy sector so as to render more attractive the thermo power plants and to be able to privatize them by attracting

ceive payment for being ready to generate electricity and supply it to the grid when it is demanded by customers. The opportunity to implement CRMs at national or regional level and their possible windfalls are currently subject to an EU-wide inquiry carried out by the European Commission, expected to be completed this summer with a final report,” Cordea told BR.

Brexit vote might hit financing Although little concrete has happened since 52 percent of the Britons who

“The Romanian authorities could enhance their efforts to reorganize the coal energy sector so as to render more attractive the thermo power plants and to be able to privatize them by attracting strategic investors” says Dan Ciobanu, partner at Suciu Popa Attorneys change in sentiment regarding nuclear technology, especially in the western side of the European Union, as the international community became more and more reserved over the development of nuclear power projects,” Suciu told BR. She added that for the plant at Tarnita, the technical and financial challenges might discourage potential investors, because the companies could struggle to recover their investments.

Vlad Cordea, managing associate at law firm Musat & Asociatii, added that Romania is not the only EU state finding it hard to attract investors for large projects. One of the reasons is that such projects are usually built for public utility purposes and generate low returns once operational. Thus, some state-aid schemes have to be rolled out to allow the investors to potentially recover their initial investments in an acceptable pe-

strategic investors. Additionally, a sector that has been overlooked in the past few years is gas and electricity storage and the development of much needed additional interconnection capacities with neighboring countries which would facilitate the export of electricity and gas and increase the national production,” said Dan Ciobanu, partner at law firm Suciu Popa Attorneys.

Under Romania’s current National Investment Plan, seven thermal power plants, totaling 1,235MW of installed capacity, are scheduled to be taken out of service by 2019. In addition, the 700MW Unit 1 in Cernavoda Nuclear Power Plant is scheduled to be temporarily taken out of service for refurbishment over 2023-2025, according to Cordea of Musat & Asociatii.

Cordea says there are several ways in which the state could attract investments for key projects, such as feed-in

voted said they wanted out of the EU, a period of uncertainty is set to engulf the Union. This might also impact the way in which financiers look at energy projects in Europe.

Cordea of Musat & Asociatii suggested that the financing mechanisms for the energy sector might take a hit in the short term, but this will change once the actual terms of Brexit are established.

“For example, credit institutions (especially those based in the UK) will probably carry out various analyses in the following period with a view to determining how Brexit could impact their activity, the legal regime of guarantees created by borrowers after Brexit, the legal regime applicable to recognition of court decisions and their enforcement after Brexit, etc,” he said.

Mitirita of PwC Romania cited the potential impact on EU legislation re-

Romania’s energy consumption Year

Amount (TWh)

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

50.52 52.54 52.96 49.79 49.25

Source: INS

Net installed capacities of energy in Romania by fuel source* Coal Hydrocarbons Hydro Wind Biomass Solar Total:

4,924 MW 3,571MW 6,339MW 2,923MW 111.9MW 1,249MW 20,419MW

Source: Data for 2016 from Transelectrica

lated to the energy sector, considering that so far, the EU has instituted regulations in this sector according to UK standards. There is therefore a risk that the result of the referendum could lead to renegotiation or replacement of regulations which may have a direct or indirect impact on the companies operating across the region.

Focusing on the legal aspects, Suciu of Suciu Popa Attorneys said that if the UK remains a member of the Internal Energy Market, it is possible that the EU legislative and regulatory regime will still apply, without any formal arrangement (e.g. implementation of the EU’s energy market regime, payment into the EU with no voting rights on the relevant legislation).

“Consequently, it could be assumed that if the UK remains a member of the Internal Energy Market, it would likely remain subject to the relevant European Energy Directives and Regulations and remain part of the institutions (such as ACER, ENTSO-E, and ENTSOG) which regulate it. On the other hand, should a more radical approach be adopted by the UK authorities, this could have a more significant impact on a variety of issues, such as access to EU markets for UK energy as well as access to UK markets for EU energy,” said Suciu.

She added that the current effort to develop Romania’s energy strategy for the coming decades should take into account the possible scenarios following Great Britain’s exit from the EU energy market. ovidiu.posirca@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

26 CouNTRY FoCus

CCIFER: French investors see high potential but big challenges in legal framework Adriana Record, executive director of the French Chamber of Commerce in Romania (CCIFER), says that although opportunities are at their highest in the country, the inconsistency in the application of economic laws, regulations, policies and procedures is still a burden for many companies. who have developed their business from scratch. With our expertise and that of our members we offer mentoring, dedicated workshops, and consultation in project development and financing opportunities.

∫ ANdA sEBEsI How has the business environment evolved in the last year from CCIFER’s perspective?

French investors in Romania have found business opportunities since the early 90s and built a long-term relationship with Romania. Today, CCIFER has more than 450 members, representing 15 percent of the GDP and more than 135,000 employees.

Every year, including in 2015, we feel a real dynamic from the newcomers and an optimistic perspective from the investors that are already here. Our community is constantly developing and we are confident that the newcomers are here to stay. For example, last year Airbus opened a new factory in Brasov, Lactalis bought the Romanian company Albalact and Leroy Merlin presented its plans for expansion and regional development, thus creating more than 60,000 new jobs. Our quarterly barometer showed an optimistic trend at the beginning of the year and throughout all the consultations we have had with companies we can easily confirm this perception.

What are the main challenges for French investors that have businesses in Romania?

The CEOs of the CCIFER member companies believe that Romania is more and more attractive to foreign investors as the economic, political and social environment has improved in recent years.

The big French groups were the first to penetrate the Romanian market and over the last 20 years they have structured their activities and were followed closely by lots of SMEs. French investors struggled to develop their activities in a rather difficult economic context which was not that open or favorable to new investments.

Amongst the main challenges faced by investors we can mention the ability to adapt to an ever growing market, the potential of diversifying products and increasing the quality of human capital on a competitive market. Opportunities are at their highest in Romania but the inconsistency in the production and ap-

What are your expectations for Romania’s economic growth in 2016?

At the moment the economic growth in Romania is among the highest in the EU and is forecast to remain above potential in 2016 and 2017. CCIFER members are quite optimistic about the economic situation and the current state of the business community in Romania. According to the Department for Foreign Investments and Public-Private Partnership, the real GDP growth rate was 3.8 percent in Q4 of 2015, one of the highest in the EU 28, with forecasts maintaining a positive outlook.

plication of economic laws, regulations, policies and procedures is still a burden for many companies.

What are some of the initiatives undertaken by the CCIFER aimed at improving the local business climate?

Over the 20 years of its existence, CCIFER has assisted more than 1,000 companies interested in the Romanian market: searching for customers or providers, providing support and helping firms set up offices in Romania. At the premises of the CCIFER offices we also have an Incubator which aims to help firms become immediately operational in its Bucharest business headquarters. CCIFER provides French and Romanian companies with space for their head offices, a postal address and work spaces for their staff.

CCIFER gives access to a network of professionals throughout all the key economic sectors. We are trying to develop our network outside Bucharest and accompany our members in their areas of work by bringing valuable ex-

pertise from the community.

Throughout our working groups on agriculture, investments, construction, European financing, human resources, new technologies, social responsibility and the French Hub, we gather members around the same theme of business and activities in order to reflect upon key measures and to propose further position papers to help the Romanian authorities with our expertise and “savoir-faire”. We present ourselves as a key strategic partner to help with the development of the country and to attract new investors. Our advocacy measures are public and transparent, seeking to initiate an open dialogue between public and private players. Last year we had a position paper on the Labor Code and this year we have just released a position paper on the dual education system, to highlight our companies’ need for a skilled work force.

In addition, this year we have created the French Hub, a club for entrepreneurs open to all CCIFER members

What are the attractive sectors for a French company that would like to set up shop in Romania now?

When speaking about the most profitable business sectors, we can mention the automotive industry which contributes the most to economic growth.

In 2014 the automotive industry represented almost 11 percent of GDP, from a global value of EUR 16 billion. Another branch with high potential is the energy industry, using both conventional and unconventional resources. Other key sectors are electrical engineering, IT, electronics and chemicals, rubber industry, textile/shoes/leatherwork, wood treatment and the food industry.

How many members does CCIFER have and how much have they invested in Romania?

French investments in Romania are up to EUR 4.1 billion, with France the fifth biggest investor in Romania. In addition, France is Romania’s fourth biggest trade partner with a 6.8 percent market share.

The local subsidiaries of big French groups have a strategic and sustainable place in the Romanian economy and they occupy in general first or second position in all key areas of industry and services. anda.sebesi@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

CouNTRY FoCus 27

French investors look for legal and fiscal predictability With significant potential for investments, Romania still lacks an efficient and structured public sector that could boost and support foreign investors in their efforts to develop their businesses on the local market. ∫ ANdA sEBEsI According to the most recent data released by the National Bank of Romania (BNR), France ranks fifth in terms of total investments in Romania. It comes behind the Netherlands, Austria, Germany and Cyprus, with EUR 4.11 billion of investments at the end of December 2014. And this is seen in the number of players from different fields that are active on the local market.

As pundits say, there were no strong incentives to enter the local market in 2015 and as a result only a limited number of major foreign companies opted to put their money into a business here.

But as Fitch said, Romania’s ratings present better a fiscal position and more favorable governance indicators.

“Nonetheless, Romania is still a competitive market: our clients are constantly growing and hiring personnel, which has started to become a difficult job, as it seems there is a lack of specialists on the market,” said Anca Roscaneanu, general manager at Gras Savoye.

A study conducted by ICAP based on financial data from December 2015 shows that 3,222 active companies with a more than 10 percent direct French shareholding were registered in Romania in June this year (either individuals or legal entities).

The study also found that 2,078 active companies that have declared financial data posted a combined EUR 12.7 billion in turnover and had 92,252 employees in December 2015. In addition, 104 firms reported a turnover of above EUR 10 million for 2015. Some 1,041 companies (50 percent) recorded profit, another 833 (40 percent) posted a loss, while the remaining 10 percent

Anca Roscaneanu, Gras Savoye

declared 0 as their result at that time.

According to ICAP, in December last year Automobile Dacia was ranked first in terms of turnover (EUR 4.25 billion), followed by Carrefour Romania (EUR 1.14 billion), Auchan (EUR 987 million), Renault Comercial Roumanie (EUR 496 million) and Expur (EUR 236 million). In terms of profits, Automobile Dacia also posted the largest profit (EUR 99 million), followed by Apa Nova Bucuresti, Carrefour Romania, CRH Ciment and Euro Auto Plastic Systems.

The researchers also found that 52 percent of the companies with more than 10 percent French shareholding

are registered in Macro-region 3 (which includes the following counties: Arges, Calarasi, Dambovita, Giurgiu, Ialomita, Prahova, Teleorman, Ilfov and Bucharest). The manufacturing sector accounted for about 20 percent of the total number of companies (415) and 46 percent of the total number of employees (about 43,000). It was followed by the wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (381 companies) and professional, scientific and technical activities (299 companies).

These three sectors represent 53 percent of all the French companies analyzed by ICAP. Manufacturing and

wholesale and retail trade are also the sectors that posted the highest number of employees (over 65,000 employees) and account for 88 percent of the total turnover.

According to Roscaneanu of Gras Savoye, companies from the west of the country face a lack of specialists. “There is still a lot of paperwork needed to run a business in Romania, but we are confident that this government will also implement a solution for companies, something similar to what they did for individuals through their Cutting Papers Committee,” she added, saying that a lack of investment in infrastructure, but also education, public health and environment corrodes the country’s competitiveness.

For the local subsidiary, the recent merger between Gras Savoye International, Willis and Towers Watson was a significant step forward. “The group’s Romanian subsidiary played an important role last year, our local activity being prominent in the region. Also, our portfolio of clients willing to invest in their employees bloomed, so we helped them to retool their human capital strategies and offered some of the best employee benefit products on the market. Furthermore, we managed to settle major claims for our clients such as fire, storm and liability – bodily injuries, and product liability, among others,” says the general manager.

Last but not least, according to the financial data from 2015, quoted by ICAP, only five sectors are not profitable: electricity, gas steam and air conditioning supply; accomodation and food service activities; arts, entertainment and recreation; mining and quarrying and other service activities. anda.sebesi@business-review.ro

Firms with largest profit by december 2015 (EuR million)

Firms with largest turnover by december 2015 (EuR million)

Company

profit

Company

Turnover

Automobile Dacia SA Apa Nova Bucuresti SA Carrefour Romania CRH Ciment (Romania) SA Euro Auto Plastic Systems SRL

99 32 28 23 12

Automobile Dacia SA Carrefour Romania SA Auchan Romania SA Renault Comercial Roumanie SRL Expur SA

4,255 1,143 987 496 236

Source: ICAP Romania

Source: ICAP Romania

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

28

French investors speak of la vie en rose as their optimism grows

All photos: Mihai Constantineanu

French companies present in Romania have a positive outlook about the local economy and its growth perspectives, argued participants in the seventh French Investors Forum, organized by Business Review this June. The overall optimism is also boosted by closer political ties between the two countries following the appointment of Dacian Ciolos as PM, they said.

From left to right: Dana Gruia Dufaut, Gruia Dufaut Law Office; Stephane Dumas, Meli Melo Paris; Olivier Ravon, Gosselin Mobility Division; Guillaume Leurent, Industrial Montaj; Edouard Millot, Finexpert.

∫ sIMoNA BAZAvAN France is the fifth largest investor in Romania according to official records, but it could rank in second or third position for actual investments on the ground, said Francois Saint Paul, the French ambassador to Romania. What is worth pointing out is that French companies have invested in all economic sectors locally, from banking and automotive to agriculture and, more recently the aeronautics industry, he added.

These investors’ overall feeling about the local economy and its growth perspectives is a positive one, the ambassador stressed. Dana Gruia Dufaut, partner at Gruia Dufaut Law Office, confirmed this. Romania still has plenty of growth potential and to this day it still feels like “a paradise for investments compared to the gloomy atmosphere in France”, she said.

The optimism is also boosted by the fact that since the appointment of Da-

cian Ciolos as PM, political ties between the two countries have returned to a level that hasn’t been seen since Romania joined the EU, said the ambassador.

And this helps spur interest in the local economy. “There is a new curiosity about Romania back in France. There remain some clichés about the country’s image, but they are getting old,” said Saint Paul.

Other speakers agreed that Romania is beginning to improve the bad image it still struggles with abroad. Shaking this off is made more difficult by the fact that the country is competing with Poland and the Czech Republic to attract new investors, said Olivier Ravon, Central & Eastern Europe sales director, Gosselin Mobility Division. Romania offers expats a very good balance between quality of life and cost of living and is perceived as being friendlier to investors than Poland, said the director.

In its turn, the government should boost this renewed interest in Romania as a business destination by coming up

with a new development strategy for the country, recommended the ambassador. “Romania had to deal with several events to which it had to adapt after 2007 and even after the financial crisis. However, today it is necessary to have a new country project which should be anchored to the new realities of the European Union, especially now in the aftermath of Brexit,” said the ambassador. He added that the rest of the EU members need to focus on the new reality after the UK’s referendum and on ways to strengthen a 27-member union.

R&d is key The quality of the local labor force is one of the main selling points that attracts French investors locally, argued participants. The skills of Romanian employees in IT and marketing are “impressive”, said Yves Martin, chief marketing officer, Orange Romania. The French telecom giant has been back in growth territory for more than a year

and the local business has contributed to this positive evolution, he added.

Today, when one in two customers has a smartphone, the company says that it has seen demand for mobile data go up considerably. Orange’s plans for the local market include ongoing investments in its network and in boosting connectivity overall, said Martin.

Ongoing investments in R&D are key to securing competitiveness both for Romania as an investment destination and for local products and services, said panelists. Here Romania can learn from France’s experience as there are mechanisms for R&D that can be transferred locally, said Edouard Millot, partner at Finexpert.

Yves Caracatzanis, general manager, Renault Group Romania, said the company is focusing on R&D activities which in turn make it possible for the manufacturer to create products that better respond to clients’ needs. One example is a Dacia automatic gearbox that was designed and manufactured in

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

29

Francois Saint Paul, French ambassador to Romania

Yves Martin, Orange Romania

Franck Haettel, Total Romania

Yves Caracatzanis, Renault Group Romania

Romania, said the GM. “We have managed to accomplish things in Romania that we weren’t able to do elsewhere,” he noted. This has enabled Dacia to evolve from being perceived as a lowcost brand to being recognized as a ‘smart buy’ option, went on Caracatzanis.

Investments in product innovation are needed more than ever given the competition from the second-hand car segment. Only one new car is registered in Romania for every three secondhand ones and new car sales have not returned to pre-crisis levels, he added.

Renault has invested some EUR 2.4 billion in the industrial system and various activities locally since taking over Dacia. Last year, the group registered a EUR 4.7 billion turnover, accounting for 3 percent of GDP. “We will continue to invest (…) to maintain our competitiveness,” said the Renault representative.

One way of ensuring further investments in R&D is placing a greater importance on education and talent retention on the local market, argued participants. Tax incentives for engineers in Romania similar to what is already in place for IT workers would lead to fewer specialists leaving the country, suggested Caracatzanis, citing the government’s intention to support research in R&D through a better taxation regime. Nevertheless, competitiveness cannot rely entirely on fiscal means and at the end of the day having a high performing education system is crucial, pointed out Saint Paul.

Not only that, but the local authorities should also do more to avoid brain drain, added Caracatzanis. According to the French ambassador there are 4 million Romanians living outside the country and measures should be taken to make sure that this number doesn’t get even higher, urged participants.

This combined with educational setbacks makes it increasingly hard for many companies to recruit locally.

Guillaume Leurent, deputy CEO at Industrial Montaj, said his company is grappling with brain drain, adding that there are problems finding workers such as welders. In order to deal with the lack of skilled workers the company will train its own by creating its own welding school, he added. Another challenge for the firm is the drop in oil prices, which has led it to seek projects abroad, as investments in the oil & gas sectors have fallen dramatically locally.

But the low level of oil prices is good news elsewhere as it helps boost the lubricants market, said Franck Haettel, general manager, Total Romania.

One unexpected helping hand for companies struggling to find employees may come from the recent Brexit vote, which might persuade Romanian workers in the UK to move back home, suggested Stephane Dumas, managing partner, Meli Melo Paris. “For the first time in about five, six years there are Romanians who have called us to ask if we have jobs available,” he said. simona.bazavan@business-review.ro

30 ENTREpRENEuR

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

Fast expansion brewing for 5 to go Radu savopol, the owner of the 5 to go coffee shop chain, aims to open between 70 and 80 locations nationwide by 2017, while this year the entrepreneur intends to invest about EUR 500,000 in expanding his chain to 40 locations. âˆŤ ANdA sEBEsI You recently announced ambitious plans for the development of your coffee shop chain by the end of this year both in Bucharest and nationwide. How much will you invest in this business expansion?

We estimate that we will reach 40 locations by the end of this year, of which 5 will be nationwide and the remainder in Bucharest. The level of investments depends on the surface area of each location and how much work it needs. We estimate a total investment for this year of about EUR 500,000.

How many coffee shops do you have now and what are the main cities you target for expansion?

At present we have 23 locations opened, 4 are in progress and another 10 franchise contracts are signed. We target mainly county residencies but we are also in negotiations with other

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

cities like Campina, Sinaia, Navodari and Otopeni. As for opening a location in malls, I can tell you that it is not an option for us. We have a project for the outside areas of malls but we haven’t opened such a location yet.

We are in discussions with a mall that will be open this fall. Our business is a proximity one and so we don’t have a pattern for our potential areas of interest. The total investment per location varies between EUR 12,000 and 20,000.

You estimated a EuR 1 million turnover for the end of this year. How is this sum split between Bucharest and other cities?

At present about 90 percent of our turnover is generated by the locations in Bucharest. We have forecasted that EUR 1 million will be possible with 20 locations opened. The total turnover

5 to go in figures: Established: 2015 2016 estimated turnover: EUR 1 million Number of current locations: 23 Number of total locations by end of 2016: 40 Total estimated investment for 2016: EUR 500,000

ENTREpRENEuR 31 generated by the entire 5 to go group will be higher by the end of this year.

How many coffee shops are operated by 5 to go and how many are franchised now?

At present five locations are operated by 5 to go and the rest are franchised. We have started the process of transferring our locations that already have a history to those entrepreneurs that are interested in a turnkey business with a history of sales, as we intend to open other new locations.

How do you intend to fight your competitors?

I think that we have opened a new sales channel positioned between HORECA and retail. I cannot name it but I feel that there is a new business area through the range of services we have created so far. The competition is welcome and we are connected to all that is new in our field of activity, studying very carefully everything that happens in more developed countries in the coffee-to-go sector.

What is the idea behind the 5 to go concept?

The main idea was to create a Romanian brand with an attractive and very functional design in the coffee-to-go segment, with quicker service than what was on the market back in 2014. Another factor was the fixed price concept which was implemented for the first

time in the sector of “to go” businesses.

What is the fixed price business model and how is it perceived by Romanian consumers?

The fixed price is the main factor that generates swiftness and the comfort that you can buy anything from that coffee shop for RON 5. It was welcomed but we needed to communicate in an aggressive manner to make consumers understand that everything costs RON 5.

To what extent do you work with Romanian suppliers?

We have managed to use Romanian producers such as Hiper Ambrozia, Joy Food, Cofetaria Octavian and Piramida.

Some of them were already established while others have grown with us. Our customized 5 to go products are supplied by Romanian producers and we intend to increase the range of such products by the end of this year.

What are your plans for the chain for 2017?

For 2017 we will focus on the development of the team and our distribution platform. We also aim to increase our number of locations to 70-80. We have started a project extending our 5 to go franchise in Poland and we are likely to open our first locations in Warsaw next year. anda.sebesi@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

32 ADVERTISING

Cannes do: local ad agencies celebrate awards haul Some 187 entries, 24 shortlists and 11 trophies (two golds, four silvers and five bronzes). This is Romania’s record at the most prestigious advertising festival in the world: Cannes Lions 2016. BR found out more. ∫ ROMANITA OPREA McCann Bucharest was once again the most awarded Romanian agency in the festival, with a win for “Bittersweet Pies” for Paul Restaurants, three bronzes in the Promo & Activation, PR and Media categories, plus one silver in Creative Data. Also from McCann, “Pay with Blood” for UNTOLD Festival won a bronze in Media and a silver in PR, while “Go Mono” for Radio 21 won a bronze in Promo. For McCann Worldgroup Romania, 2016 is the sixth year in a row that the agency has won awards in Cannes and it remains the most awarded agency in Romania at the international creativity festival.

“This is the best year for the McCann network in Cannes. Europe is the region with the highest contribution, 39 Lions, and Romania is the second best agency in Europe in terms of performance. I believe what is most important is to repeat the performance every year,” said Adrian Botan, global executive creative director at McCann Worldgroup.

“This year too we are preparing to celebrate after Cannes, as it is the sixth consecutive year we have won awards.

We are proud we have managed to create a culture in which performance is part of the day-to-day work. It isn’t a surprise or a one-off. I also want to congratulate the other Romanian teams who won. Together, we can put Romania on the world creativity map and bring more respect for the work and executions from our country,” added Catalin Dobre, executive creative director at McCann Bucharest.

The only gold trophies this year went to two agencies that haven’t won before in Cannes: Cohn&Jansen JWT and Jazz Communication.

Cohn&Jansen JWT received a gold in PR for “Purity Test”, for the client Aqua Carpatica, the campaign that also brought the agency the two most prestigious awards in the Romanian advertising market: the Grand Effie and the “Campaign of the Year” at FIBRA Awards.

Jazz Communications won a gold for “A Voice for Songbirds #SAVEOURSONGBIRDS”, for the Romanian Ornithological Society and Natura 2000, at the Entertainment Gala, a campaign created with the help of the PR agency Rogalski Damaschin.

Publicis Bucharest came second for the number of awards, its campaign “ACR Street View Test” winning one sil-

Eugen Suman, Kubis Interactive

Alex Negoescu, Cohn & Jansen JWT

ver in the Promo & Activation category and the “Bernie Speed Test” (for the client ArCuB Bucharest) getting a silver as well, in PR. On the entries list, this year brought a few firsts: Bitdefender, a client, entered work done in-house and MindShare, a media agency, had three entries.

After last year’s absence, Tribal, Webstyler and Digital Star contributed one, two and five works, respectively, therefore confirming the digital industry’s interest in competition. Kubis Interactive joined them, with eight entries, compared to just two in 2015.

After one year’s leave of absence, the PR industry came back through MSL Group The Practice (two entries) and Rogalski Damaschin (three entries).

Amongst the agencies that did not compete last year but were very present in 2016 were: Cohn&Jansen JWT (13), Mullen Lowe Profero (four), Media Concept Store (three), Jazz (three) and Ogilvy (two).

Upping their game in the number of entries (compared to 2015) were GMP (six versus two), FCB (three versus two) and the highest rise, McCann (63 versus 43).

The competition agencies’ eyes

through

But how was the competition seen this year by agency representatives? “You go to Cannes to see pieces of work that make you say ‘Damn, I wish I had done this’. Not campaigns that have a million dollar budget, but campaigns that are constructed using weapons that we often use: provocation, guerrilla, real time marketing, etc. (McWhooper, House of Cards for Netflix, etc). These campaigns make you more enthusiastic and build up your energy for the year to come,” comments Catalin Dobre, executive creative director at McCann Bucharest. Present in the last six festivals, Dobre is already a connoisseur of the event.

“For us it’s the sixth year in a row when we have thrown a party after Cannes; the sixth year when we have scored lions at the festival. This time we got seven trophies, the best result after the big hit in 2011, when we got 12 lions and two Grand Prix. I’m particularly happy because four of our campaigns were shortlisted and three of them awarded. This means we are doing more good work for more clients, both small and big,” added Dobre. But how does he explain the agency’s constant results? Is there a recipe? “Our main asset is that we managed to build a great creative culture in the agency that focuses on generating ideas for everyday work. Doing campaigns that are featured in the mainstream media around the world and winning creative awards doesn’t come as a surprise, it comes as an ambition for most of the briefs we are working on. Of course we don’t always succeed, but the process is more important than the win itself. It is like the training of an athlete, only that we are training our creativity,” concluded the McCann Bucharest representative.

By contrast, for Alex Negoescu, creative director at Cohn&Jansen JWT, it was the first time at Cannes Lions. “Because of its sheer size, it was very different than I had expected. The experience was extremely brief, but nevertheless extraordinary. The quality of the ideas was, as usual, truly impressive. Most inspiring, for me, were the data-driven ideas, like the campaign from Costa Rica’s Ministry of Woman’s affairs where they used the 911 domestic abuse reports during football matches to outstanding effect,” said Negoescu. As for the win and agency’s success, he was very surprised to see the campaign winning the Gold Lion and believes the key was the honesty, in all development stages: honesty about the target, the product, and finally about the idea, to keep it as simple as it was. “I thought a nomination was more than enough (though some of my colleagues may disagree).

For me, personally, it represents proof that real work for real clients can be Cannes material, if only a bit more difficult. For the agency, I hope it will mean new business opportunities. We’ve been on this road forever and I’m glad it has paid off. We try our best on every brief we get, and come up with extraordinarily relevant solutions. Sometimes, they get awards, and we’re all very happy for it,” added the creative director of Cohn&Jansen JWT.

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

ADVERTISING 33

Irina Pencea, Jazz

Catalin Dobre, McCann Bucharest

Cannes Lions 2016 was a turning what we have done so far. We dare to point in Jazz Communication’s history think globally and not locally. We have as well. The creative agency was the already done this through several reonly independent Romanian agency to gional projects for our clients, but this win a gold, from entering only one cam- definitely raises the bar,” said Pencea. paign. It was also the first time the As for the signal given to the Romanian agency had entered the fierce interna- advertising market, she brings up the tional advertising competition. Accord- honesty mentioned by Negoescu of ing to Irina Pencea, Jazz partner, the Cohn&Jansen JWT. In his case, the trophy is confirmation that the agency’s award being for the Romanian market a initial vision, that of making a differ- call for honesty, for work done with enence by itself, without the support of a ergy and enthusiasm. A challenge, as network or investor, had become reality, Pencea points out, “to play this game in as she put it, a confirmation that great the right way, with real work that makes ideas are powerful beyond the politics a real difference for real people”.

For her part, Ghenoiu believes that and strategies of festivals, that there is still hope for great and honest work to this gold represents an opportunity for stand out in global competitions. “We the agency and the chance to tread new do not play the game of international paths, but one that rests on the fact that festivals. We do not have a 'festival Jazz wins not only at creative festivals, strategy' or a 'festival budget'. We aim but also at efficiency ones. They must for the best ideas that change some- now prove that this was not just a onething in people around us, for brands or off or beginner’s luck. The pressure is causes we believe in. If these are good now fully on the members of the enough to win the hearts of a festival agency’s teams, who attribute their sucjury, then we are more than happy. But cess to their energy, talent, determinawe don't do it for the festival. That's why, tion and hard work. As expected, such for us, gold in Cannes is a confirmation a performance doesn’t come easily. of our power to change things even if we “Work, work, work, trial and error, start all over again, honesty. We believed in are independent,” said Pencea.

In her turn, Andreea Ghenoiu, group the project. We loved the project and creative director at Jazz Communica- knew it was a good one, a piece of comtion and the initiator of the winning munication that really changed somecampaign, believes that the gold in En- thing. The campaign was not done for a tertainment is confirmation that small festival. We said from the very beginand independent agencies can set ning that if it doesn’t change anything trends on the market, can be a real, au- we will not enter it anywhere,” conthentic voice. “It means that you don’t cluded Ghenoiu. According to Eugen have to be big and famous and all over Suman, creative director of Kubis Interthe world to stand a chance at creativity. active and president of the ADC*RO, Creativity is about people, not struc- this year’s Cannes competition level tures and corporations. It felt awesome was good. But then again, it was always to be the only independent agency in good. “From the tens of thousands of Romania winning a gold. Unbeliev- submitted entries only about 10 percent able… for the first, let’s say, 72 hours! go on to reach a shortlist. To win a lion But then we thought… what next? And puts you in the rarefied top 3 or 4 perwe have to see what next… that’s where cent in the world. Even though the our focus has moved now,” added number of awards might seem like a lot, you must consider the number of subGhenoiu.

What will this win mean for the missions. And since there are so many agency and what are its representatives entries and the juries are not robots, bad hoping? “The first doors that the award things can also slip by, shortlist posihas opened for us are the doors inside tions might be given to work that doesour minds. We dare to aim further than n't deserve it, even lions might end up

in the hands of the unworthy. However, mistakes are few, they don't invalidate the festival,” commented Suman.

Criticism Unfortunately, the Romanian marcomm market is still characterized by some degree of envy, hypocrisy and gossiping, say players. Instead of taking comfort in the good results and encouraging and congratulating advertising colleagues, many industry representatives are still choosing to pass comment on the winning works and their real value or lack of it on the market. “There are two things that will never change: haters and campaigns that win too much. And this generates a huge conversation. Some of them are right: maybe there is too much social work, of course we should get rid of the ghosts [e.n. a campaign created by the agency without a prior brief by the client, with the purpose of winning a creative award in a competition] and, yeah, maybe some campaigns do win too much. But we must notice a big trap here: we need to discuss, but we shouldn’t get trapped in this conversation and get defocused from our objective. Our job is to create great work, not to comment on bad work,” argued Dobre.

In turn, Suman also believes that there will always be voices criticizing works and the big awards – usually people who have never won anything and are suffering from sour grapes. “I'm not saying ghosts don't happen, because they do (there were two big scandals this year in Cannes – Almap BBDO, which has returned the lion, and Grey Singapore, which has yet to do so). But to say that the whole festival is about scam work is just plain wrong. To these people I say: haters are going to hate.

However, in clear-cut cases of proven ghost work, I think Cannes should do more than they are currently doing. I would like to see the agency responsible banned from entering any work for five years. That would make people think twice before doing something like this,” said the Kubis Interactive creative director.

His opinion is shared by Andreea Ghenoiu, who doesn’t see an end to this discussion. “What I have noticed though is that big winners, big advertising men like Droga or Hegarty or Serpa were never involved in such discussions.

They came as jury presidents to Cannes several times; they recognize the importance of Cannes. They have so many awards they have lost count and kept on making their best work despite criticism and endless ‘ghost’ discussions. These are the advertising gentlemen in my opinion and we should learn from them.

Make work before criticizing! Criticism and hate only ‘eat’ your creative energy,” concluded Ghenoiu.

Lessons for the future Every year Cannes has been seen as the icon in the advertising industry world, say pundits. The place to go and get inspired, return home and want to be the best for your agency and country. The place that motivates advertising people and marketers. And according to the specialists who spoke to BR, the trend remains the same. What should Romania learn and keep in mind for the years to come? While Negoescu hopes the local industry’s representatives will raise their creative standards and trust that creativity can bring the best results, Dobre says that many people complain that the festival has become too big, that it has too many categories and tech companies entering the festival. “But we need to remember that the title is “International Festival of Creativity”, not “Advertising Festival”. So of course you have entertainment, of course you have more start-ups and tech companies entering. Creativity comes from many more industries than advertising. So, if we want to grow, we need to find ways of collaborating with these industries, not competing with them,” added Dobre.

“Never give up. Have higher expectations. Do better work no matter what.

Be inspired by real life and be inspiring for real people,” concluded Suman. romanita.oprea@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

34 ADVERTISING

OPINION Teodora Migdalovici Cannes Lions Ambassador in Romania

How to Cannes A subjective guide to the festival’s dense content More than 300 seminars in 9 days – it’s no wonder Cannes is a labyrinth of potential knowledge, gems of inspiration and, yes, sometimes a poorly invested 30 minutes. The secret is aiming for what best suits your future evolution.

As a festival hunter for 18 years, I’ve developed a method for curating content that will prove useful:

Mark Pritchard and Matt Eastwood.

1. Train your nose

5. Social economy

I look for previous years’ winners that had an impact on me. Are they on stage? Let’s have a look. Practical examples: The Rice Code, True Wetsuits, Japanese Harmony – they all had magnetic ideas that reshaped the landscape of creativity and all belong to Hakuhodo. A company that is so fluent in design and digital – disciplines of the future – with a team gifted with sensitivity in recoding realities, surely they will have something interesting to say.

Therefore, I keep an eye out for Hakuhodo seminars. Their speakers never fall short of expectations.

Masaru Kitakaze talked this year about the relevance of small, ultracompetent and highly versatile teams. He was The Man for that: beyond being the CCO of the most awarded digital agency in the world, he is passionate about Japanese calligraphy, oil painting and pottery.

His seminar was a confirmation that one can achieve a lot with a minimal yet exceptional team, which has the right mind and heart set. As a result, back home I will be a better consultant when it comes to teams’ DNA and their dynamics.

With technology at our fingertips, our industry has the means to make the economy work better, while serving society in the process. Every year there is proof that a win-win-win mantra can work and intelligent social thinking can lead to profit. Tom’s founder Blacke Mycoskie, the Just Water brand empowered by Will Smith and G-Star Raw endorsed by Pharrell Williams are the living proof of social creativity done right.

4. Sounds of the future Anything future oriented, that can improve the way we work, think, feel, act within our community and interact with consumers as communication professionals, is on my radar. Therefore, thank God for the Lions Innovation.

About Teodora Migdalovici

2. Look for cultural inspiration Cannes is literally the United Nations of creativity. Immerse yourself in content that is culturally appealing to your business and look for relevant speakers. While some are still fascinated by the American way, my frequency is set to Latin America (thanks to our surprising similarities), the Asian creative ecosystem – humble and exceptionally

effective – and the Scandinavian one – outrageously bold, yet minimal in execution. Some names not to be missed: Marcello Serpa, Jose Miguel Sokoloff, Fernando Vega Olmos – for the Latinos, Yoshihiro Yagi and John C Jay – for the Asians, Anna Qvennerstedt and Tom Beckman – for the

Nordics.

3. Create a personal taste Over the years, remarkable individuals have inspired me, regardless of their origins. For their ability to shape directions for tomorrow’s creative thinking process, on my list are always

Migdalovici has been Cannes Lions Ambassador in Romania for the past 11 years and is the founder of the Alternative School for Creative Thinking.

Her areas of expertise cover personal branding, emotional intelligence and contemporary creative thinking patterns. Her expertise has been sought at international events in Paris, Vienna, London, Singapore, Mauritius and Mumbai. Her contributions as author, strategist and trainer were awarded with “New Moment Idea Award” – Piran 2014; “Most Passionate Cannes Ambassador” – Silver trophy, London 2013, by the Lions Festivals; ”Brand Leadership Award” by Asian Brand Summit, Mumbai 2007; double Gold for “Coca-Cola Books of Smiles” at the European Excellence Awards and Stevie Awards, 2006.

Her Alternative students won twice in a row the only Romanian Gold in Cannes in 2014 (Cyber) and 2013 (Design).

She is a catalyst and a coach for the Romanian creative industry, motivating and inspiring seniors and juniors alike to push their limits and perform on the world stage.

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

EXPAT EYE 35

Brexit brings shame on the British In BR’s regular look at life in Bucharest and Romania through the eyes of an outsider, our correspondent reflects on the UK’s referendum result and recent threats to the capital’s lively public events scene.

∫ DEBBIE STOWE “So you’re from London but you live here in Bucharest… why?” is a question I’ve been asked innumerable times since I moved to Romania. Many local people couldn’t understand why I would choose to leave somewhere more advanced, more normal, less chaotic, and so on, to build a life and career in Eastern Europe.

“Alta tara” (another country) they would often say when I talked about aspects of life back in the UK. “It’s more civilized where you’re from.”

To me, it makes no sense to talk about being “proud” of one’s nationality. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved personally, but how can I be proud of something that I had nothing to do with? Where I was born was just dumb luck. I like a lot about the UK, and I’m grateful for the opportunities that being born there has given me, but I did nothing to earn them.

I feel the same when people here tell me that they feel “embarrassed” to admit to being Romanian when they’re travelling abroad, because of the country’s poor reputation in Western Europe.

Invariably, these are hard-working, honest and decent young people who’d be a credit to any country.

But while I can’t take credit for my Britishness, I can’t deny that it’s been pleasant over the years to have people telling me how great, civilized and wellrun my homeland is, to be associated with somewhere that Romanians admire and hold up as an example.

That’s all changed. The vast and

damaging implications of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union are still emerging. But it’s clear that the country is irreparably diminished by the (albeit narrow) outcome of the referendum.

From being an open, tolerant nation (at least in my mind), Britain is recast as isolationist, inward-looking, fearful of foreigners and the outside world. From a country that seeks to work together with its partners to maintain peace and prosperity in Europe, it now shuns cooperation.

Is it an exaggeration to say that to Eastern Europeans, the UK and its culture have represented freedom and opportunity? Three million EU citizens are living, working and studying in Britain.

And the horrible message that Brexit sends to them is that they’re unwelcome, their contribution unwanted.

What an unjustifiable snub.

So now it’s my turn to be embarrassed because of my nationality, to wonder if foreigners will view me badly because of the country I come from.

Meanwhile, back in the UK – so long a bastion of stability – politics is in disarray, with Boris Johnson, the lying, opportunistic chief architect of Brexit and a man who’s insulted President Obama and offended numerous other countries and groups with his racist quips and gaffes, now in charge of Britain’s dealings with the world.

I’ve never been so grateful to live in Romania.

Road to nowhere Of course, during my years here, Bucharest has moved a lot closer to becoming like any other Western metrop-

olis. Part of this has to do with the public events that I’ve seen develop here – things like marathons, fitness initiatives, outdoor theater and Pride marches, which take place on the streets of the city.

These have gone from not being held at all when I first arrived in Romania (as far as I could tell), to small affairs with relatively few participants, to fullblown dates on the city calendar that attract hundreds or thousands of attendees and contribute to Bucharest’s vibrant personality.

So of course it should have come as little surprise that one of the first items on the incoming mayor’s to-do list was to try and scrap them.

(For those who don’t follow local politics, Bucharest’s new City Hall occupant Gabriela Firea infamously said the Romanian president Klaus Iohannis was not a “proper family man” because he didn’t have children. Ironically a statement with echoes in that of British prime ministerial wannabe Andrea Leadsom, who said her children gave

her more of a stake in the country’s future than childless Theresa May, implying that this would make her a better leader.)

Firea recently announced that she wanted to ban “weekend activities” from the streets of the capital, because of the inconvenience caused to drivers by road closures. “A Bucharest for cars, not for people” bemoaned irate citizens.

One of the things many expats love most about Bucharest is how accessible culture is here. There’s a good range of concert venues selling affordable tickets to see diverse artists, and while in the UK opera or jazz, for example, is often considered high art and not really something for the masses, I don’t get that exclusivist feeling in Bucharest.

Here, the cultural scene seems more democratic. This definitely owes itself to the range of impressive public events, for example the Music and Film Festival and Bucharest Jazz Festival held in Piata George Enescu over the summer, which allow curious citizens to sample musical genres that could otherwise seem intimidating, without buying an expensive ticket and being locked in for two hours or more.

From marchers celebrating the LGBT community to puppets, dancers and actors in the streets, musicians playing in open squares to athletes, both professional and amateur, pushing their personal boundaries, Bucharest can be rightfully proud of the eclectic range of public events that unfold across the capital.

Yes, it can be annoying for motorists whose route is disrupted, but the road closures are occasional, and the center of the city offers comprehensive and well priced public transport alternatives.

Fortunately Firea has rowed back from her comments, and the capital’s public events seem safe for now. Giving us Bucharest-based Brits some distraction at least from our homeland’s woes. debbie.stowe@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

36 RESTAURANT REVIEW

A viet-con job

Photo: Alex Carstea

Thang Long, Bucur 11

Q. What have Viet Nam and restaurant Thang Long got in common? A. Absolutely nothing ! I have given up trying to find just one gastronomically authentic Asian restaurant in town, and this joint ranks amongst the worst rubbish I have encountered.

But as this is the only Vietnamese chophouse in town, I had to check it out. Vietnamese people are both fascinating and unique in character.

They are of Napoleonic stature, which means they average only 1.4 m. in height, and yet this proud warrior nation beat both France and the USA in war. That makes them pretty fascinating to me. Their cuisine is unique, as although they share the same herbs and spices as neighboring Thailand, they use them in an entirely different manner.

So off we go to Thang, and share with me a comedy of errors. They can seat 30 covers, and on a Saturday night the place was nearly full. Their clientele was a scruffy lot who probably think that any restaurant serving bowls of rice must surely be Chinese.

The cheap prices there were probably the magnet that drew them in.

So with a packed house, it was hopelessly undermanned as there was only one waiter, who was also the

owner. I would not be surprised if he was also the chef, as we had to wait one hour for our meal to arrive. Meanwhile, we amused ourselves as we watched our waiter tearing around the tables in a frenzy.

When the menu arrived, alarm bells were ringing in my head, as it revealed 120 ‘different’ dishes. Different? They had to be kidding. For they take one dish, with rice, or without rice, or with noodles or without – and hey presto they claim it to be four dishes. But more of this chicanery later.

I asked for ‘Pho’, the national dish of Vietnam. To make it correctly, you prepare a soup by simmering beef bones for up to ten hours and serve it with noodles at the bottom of a steaming hot bowl. Thereafter (in the fashion of a fondue), you add to it a side dish of sliced beef, coriander and fragrant red-tipped Thai basil. But not a chance here. The beef soup tasted like a Knorr stock cube, there was no side of coriander and basil, and the beef slices were already in the soup.

I remonstrated over this with our waiter/owner/chef, and his reply was jaw dropping: “You are correct BUT THIS IS ROMANIA, NOT VIET NAM , SO I WILL DO IT ANY WAY I LIKE.” In

which are sourced from his local Bucharest supermarket.

So we missed such blended Vietnamese and Thai classics as spring rolls wrapped in a lettuce leaf lined with fresh aromatic Viet mint (kinn gioi) all accompanied by a dipping dish (nam prik) of fish sauce, garlic, lime juice and hot chili seeds (prik khi nu). Clearly it was too authentic to put on the menu. So too were other classic dishes, namely a selection of dumplings such as ‘banh xeo’ made from rice flour stuffed with minced pork and shrimp, steamed and served in a banana leaf. Nor did they offer a selection of baked and stuffed pastries. Oh, what’s the point of my frustrating you with all the dishes they should have made, but did not?

Instead we had to suffer stir fried beef with vegetables and ludicrously described as containing vodka which was indiscernible. This was one of the same dishes stretched out into seven ‘different’ dishes by the addition or omission of either tomato, or pineapple, or mushrooms etc.

I shall not bore you further by reporting on the other dishes we had.

Suffice it to say they were all bland, all tasting the same, and all lacking in flaother words, he was treating his cus- vor. They cried out for the harmless tomers with contempt, assuming flavor enhancer, monosodium glutathem to be too ignorant to know the mate (MSG), but of course the house real thing from a fake. Ironically, he did not have it.

At this point I must challenge the may have been right.

And there was no ‘real thing’ here. ludicrous and widely held assumpNot one Vietnamese dish. He added tion that all Chinese, all Japanese, all with self-effacing honesty, “It is too Thais and all Vietnamese are experts much trouble to import goods from (or are even cooks) in their own naVietnam.” I can list 95 separate Viet- tional cuisine. It is all too evident that namese herbs and spices, but this Thang Long appears to know nothing cheating house uses only: garlic, about Vietnamese food. wood ear mushrooms, tomato, onion, carrots, chili, bean sprouts, lemon- Michael Barclay grass, marrow and fish sauce – all of Mab.media@dnt.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

JAZZ 37

All I want is to have fun World jazz legend Dee Dee Bridgewater was on stage on the last day of JazzTM, giving an amazing show. With hundreds crowding the permanent seating area in Timisoara’s Victoriei Square and hundreds more enjoying the concert from the edges, Bridgewater electrified the audience. What is it like to be a living legend of jazz? Business Review went behind the scene with the star to find out.

Photo: Jazztm

backing me at that jazz festival and he did most of the trumpet solos and I was really surprised. Then I came back to Shanghai two years later and I hung out with him because I liked his approach to the trumpet and the fact that he had decided to leave the US to do jazz – he is a young man who is not afraid to step up on his own, following what he is feeling, something that I have always tried to do. I decided to bring him under my wing, back to the States and to Europe. I have a son who is 24 years old and has an ear for musicians, being also a guitar player, so from time to time he talks to me about young musicians whom I should check, and I generally do. In fact, Theo has started to get more and more bookings so I’m starting to watch more closely for new musicians. All I want is to have fun and I don’t think music has to be serious in order to have a good time.

∫ OANA VASILIU You once said that jazz music is marketed incorrectly as a genre only for intellectuals, and nowadays young people are not very interested in it. What do you think it would take to change their minds?

I think that there is a new movement of young people towards jazz music and live music and that’s something I have noticed in the last two years, especially at my concerts where I see more young people coming. I don’t know if this is something that is happening for jazz in general or is just for my gigs because I’m working with young musicians. The leader of my group, the trumpet player Theo Croker, who is a musician in his own right and whom I’ve been tutoring for five years now, is beginning to have his own reputation. Maybe at my concerts it is a combination of these two things – meeting me and meeting him.

But this is just my personal observation.

I also believe that live music in general is starting to suffer because of these new devices and social media. It seems we are going more and more into online streaming instead of purchasing so the whole recording industry suffers. For me, the most important thing is to play live music and to have interaction with my public, so this social media thing isn’t something I particularly like.

You are back in Romania. How do you find this particular festival?

I simply love it. I particularly love the programming because it’s eclectic. In all the years I lived in France, I really embraced the eclecticism of a lot of the European festivals, but I like this particular festival because you seem to focus on more different jazz music and styles from all over the place. But what I think is fabulous is the fact that you mix local jazz players with international ones, something that a lot of festivals don’t do.

How do you comment upon the fact that lots of jazz festivals are happening outside the US, where jazz was born?

The European public is very important for jazz music because summer is a period of festivals and I actually do more festivals in Europe then I do in the US, and yes, the European public is excellent. These festivals provide opportunities for everyone: to meet people, discover new beats, and make friends. I find it great and very healthy for the music itself.

You mentioned before that you mentor young musicians, which is the case with your trumpeter, Theo Croker. How do you choose them?

I met Theo eight years ago in Shanghai when he was in a big band that was

What advice would you give to a young jazz singer?

This is a strange business and even though women have made their way in it, it’s still tough. One thing that I tell young females is that they have to learn to be tough and not to listen to reviews or critics. They should defend what they really want to do and not allow themselves to be dictated to in terms of what music to do. I tell young musicians that they need to learn as much as they can about the music. Today, it seems that the better armed you are, the better off you are.

Furthermore, they should know about the business behind the music because so many young people are not interested in this aspect, but you have to learn how to take care of yourself. oana.vasiliu@business-review.ro

www.business-review.eu Business Review | August 2016

38 CITY

Cultural calendar ∫ OANA VASILIU Folk You July 22-23, Vama Veche (Constanta county)

Twelve years ago, folk artist Florian Pitis launched Folk You, with a manifesto of “the resistance movement against poured stupidity”, in Vama Veche, Romania’s southernmost Black Sea resort, and the festival is still a beacon for music lovers.

Padina Fest July 28-31, Padina, Bucegi Mountains (Dambovita county)

and Iron Maiden, the headliners of the rock festival which will take place in the capital.

Untold August 4-7, Cluj Napoca

Summerwell August 13-14, Buftea (Ilfov county)

Stirbei Palace.

Divan August 22-28, Cetate (Dolj county) The Divan film and culinary art festival once again brings the spirit of the

Romania’s biggest electronic music festival, which won the Best Major Festival title at the 2015 European Festival Awards, will bring back to its stage artists such as Armin van Buuren, DJ Hardwell, who was voted the best DJ in the world in 2013 and 2014, and Afrojack, another top 10 DJ.

Anonimul Film Festival August 8-14, Sfantu Gheroghe (Tulcea county)

Those tired of the noise and bustle of the city can head up to 1,500 feet, to the Padina Fest, for camping, forest fun and good Romanian music.

Rock the City July 29-30, Bucharest No introduction is needed for Muse

sopp are the headliners, but the rest of the line-up is also impressive.

The idyllic backdrop of the Danube Delta and Black Sea adds to this festival’s charms. The movies are usually selected from international film festivals.

Spellground August 12-14, Navodari (Constanta) Live music, art performances, workshops, great food and lots of exciting moments in front of the three Spellground concert stages, all with an amazing view, is the promise made by the organizers. The Kooks and Röyk-

Dubbed “a festival like a holiday”, the event brings together the Chemical Brothers, Hurts, The 1975, Years & Years, The Neighbourhood, BØRNS, Blossoms, HONNE, Sundara Karma and HÆLOS in the beautiful gardens of

Balkans to an old Danube grain-shipping port, with food, movies, documentaries, debates and workshops, all at Cetate Harbor. editorial@business-review.ro