ZF English

From billions in petroleum sector to entrepreneurship

21.06.2010, 19:38 15

Ion Sturza, 50, the former deputy CEO of Rompetrol, considered akey person in the transaction whereby the petroleum group developedby Romanian businessman Dinu Patriciu was sold to state-run Kazakhcompany KazMunaiGaz, says plans to invest on his own have not goneas well as he had hoped for, but he is optimistic "because thingscannot get any worse".

Sturza left the Rompetrol group, a 7 billion-dollar businesswith over 9,000 employees, in September last year, announcingshortly afterwards that he wanted to allocate 30 billion euros ofhis own money to an investment fund targeted exclusively at theRomanian market, called Greenlight Invest. Moving from big figuresto more modest ones was quite difficult, Sturza admits.

Although when he launched the investment fund in Romania, Sturzabelieved true shopping would begin at the beginning of this year,when banks would be forced to put up for sale a series of assetstaken over from clients who could no longer afford to pay theirinstalments, the market reality contradicted him. The onlyacquisition opportunity was created by investment funds thatdecided to close their exposure to Romania and sell some of theirassets.

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