CEO hunters share 7m-euro market per year
The so-called headhunters, firms that "hunt" CEOs for companies,
annually place around 200 executives who earn more than 100,000
euros a year.
Local companies 'steal' annually at least 200 top executives from
competition, even though the turnovers of the biggest headhunters
have fallen by 30 to 40% against 2008. The 200, the majority of
whom are Romanians, are the best-paid employees in Romania.
"I don't think the local executive search market exceeds 6-7
million euros and every newcomer will have a very tough time. If
big foreign firms enter the market, they will have to rely almost
exclusively on the business coming from the network, from abroad,
with chances being very small for them to make a significant
turnover exclusively with clients from Romania," said George
Butunoiu, one of the best-known headhunters, who runs a
430,000-euro business. However, the Germans at Kienbaum, with over
100 million euros in turnover in 2009, have recently opened an
office in Bucharest. Basically, an executive search firm primarily
means having a list of at least 10,000 people and their phone
numbers in order to contact them with prospective offers.
The headhunters' figures are also confirmed by a ZF analysis based
on information in the third edition of the 'Who's Who in Business
Romania 2010 - The leading 1,000 people in business' yearbook,
which reveals that at least 140 executives were new entries in the
yearbook in 2010.