Page 40 - bne_Magazine_May_2017_print

40 I Cover story bne May 2017
4
Gabriel Comanescu
$410mn
Oil services
Comanescu (50) owns Grup Servicii Petroliere offshore oil service group, which he established in 2004. The group’s fleet – which includes off- shore drilling rigs, multitask vessels, technologi- cal vessels, heavy lift crane barges and onshore heavy lift units – is looking to capitalise on the growing offshore activity in the Black Sea.
5
$220mn Retail
Iulian Stanciu
Stanciu (34) is part owner (25%) and CEO
of Dante International, which operates the largest Romanian online retailer eMag, which has taken over PC Garage and is targeting €1bn in sales. Stanciu also owns NOD, a consumer goods distribution firm that developed its own brands including kitchen equipment brand He- inner, and the Flanco electronics retailer.
6
$120mn Software
Florin and Mariuca Talpes
Florin Talpes (58) is the founder and CEO of one of Romania’s best known companies, Bitdefender. A maths graduate, Talpes created Softwin shortly after the fall of communism. Bitdefender has the largest security delivery infrastructure on the globe, protecting 500mn users from 150 countries.
7
$65mn Finance
Horia Ciorcila
Ciorcila (54) is the president of Banca Trasilva- nia, Romania’s second largest bank by assets and the first to be listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Previously, Ciorcila was founder of cable telecom companies Astral TV and Storm TV, which were later sold to UPC Romania.
8
$45mn Software
Radu Georgescu
Georgescu (49) is best known for having devel- oped RAV antivirus, which he sold to Microsoft in 2003. He has also developed and sold Gecad ePayment (to Naspers), Avangate (to Francisco Partners) and Axigen (to local investors). Cur- rently, he operates a private equity investment fund, Gecad Ventures.
forecasting that banks will cease to exist in their current form within five to seven years. “Fintech is now a reality, not something in the imagination
of the funny guys from IT. This is a utility mainly connecting people who have money with people who want
the money,” he told bne IntelliNews on the sidelines of the Foreign Investors Summit 2016 in Bucharest.
“Today the technology is ready to provide this connection without any major interference from the physical banks. In five to seven years the banks will disappear as they are today.”
While his business activities have taken him mainly to Romania, Sturza, now 56, is still politically active within
his native Moldova. Some 16 years after his brief stint as prime minister, he was again nominated for the position, this time by Moldova’s then President Nicolae Timofti. However, he failed to gain support from MPs, and Pavel Filip, a Democratic Party member close to oligarch Vlad Plahotnuic, was elected instead.
At the time, Sturza openly accused Plahotniuc of using criminal files with information on Timofti’s family to blackmail the president, an allegation the oligarch denied. Corruption and state capture by oligarchs are the biggest problems facing Moldovans today, Sturza told bne IntelliNews the following year.
While much was made at the time of the 2016 presidential election’s role in determining whether Moldova would continue its path towards the EU or switch back towards Russia (it was won by pro-Russian candidate Igor Dodon), Sturza said this was a diversion from the real issues facing Moldovans.
“The biggest challenge for Moldova today is to fight corruption, oligarchs and to fight of course our poverty,” he said. “Everybody tried to divert our discussions to geopolitical things but for normal people it doesn't matter
if it's west or east, Europe or Russia. They want to live decent lives and not to be humiliated by oligarchs.”
www.bne.eu
Name Net worth
Sector
“Fintech is now a reality, not something in the imagination of the funny guys
from IT. This is a utility mainly connecting people who have money with people
who want the money”