Black November: Cristian Burci's companies and Astral Impex - biggest insolvencies in Romanian economy

The two biggest privately held Romanian companies in Arad county - Astral Impex and Astra Vagoane have gone insolvent in November, becoming the biggest insolvency cases in the country's economy thus far.
Siblings Ioan and Floare Cuc (Astral Impex) and businessman Cristian Burci (Astra Vagoane Arad) decided that having their own companies file for insolvency was the only way to go in a bid to overcome the current crisis.
Looking at its 2009 turnover, the default of Astral Impex is the biggest insolvency in the local economy so far, yet the blow dealt to the almost 5,000 employees of the three companies controlled by Cristian Burci (Astra Vagoane Arad, Romvag Caracal and Meva Turnu Severin) that went insolvent this month was much worse.
"Although the three companies had contracts signed with Germany's Deutsche Bahn, Austria's OBB and with companies from Switzerland and France until 2013, the decline in demand for freight transportation and implicitly for freight cars caused them to ask for deferments and rescheduling of the contracts signed," said Anca Rusu, IRS spokesperson.
On the other hand, siblings Ioan and Floare Cuc, owners of Astral Impex, a company whose business stood at 516 million RON (120 million euros) last year, filed for the insolvency of their company one year and a half after having started the whirlwind of insolvencies in the Romanian economy with the SPAR supermarkets - a business from which creditors have about 30 million euros to recover