Swedish Skanska Group, one of the leading construction companies in Europe on Tuesday announced it would withdraw from several Eastern European markets, Romania inclusive, Financial Times reports.
This is the first official report of Swedish Group's exit from the Romanian market. The group had been operating on this market since 1999, when it established Skanska Romania, a branch that has already suspended operations. Skanska had a partnership concluded with another Swedish native company TC International for the Romanian market.
"Skanska has suspended operations in Romania. The group decided to completely reorganise operations in the countries where it has branches opened, " Carmen Ianu, TC International development manager and former project manager of Skanska Romania told Ziarul Financiar.
"It seems the group will reorganise its expansion strategy by merging or absorbing local companies and shedding its branches, but nothing is yet final," Ianu added.
She specified Skanska Romania had not be disbanded yet. "KPMG is handling the current operations, while another company has undertaken the financial issues, but the staff has left. TC International took over the administration of the warranty contracts for the projects in which it participated," Ianu said.
Sources on the market say withdrawal from the Romanian market actually took place quite a while ago, because the Swedish group did not find enough opportunities here. The construction works performed on the Romanian market in 2002 are worth about $3.5bn, according to preliminary estimates of the experts in the industry, and are estimated to be worth about five percent more in 2003.
Early last year, Thomas Erlandsson, Skanska Romania manager at that time had told Ziarul Financiar he was considering the possibility of going into wastewater recycling projects market in Romania, as well as into infrastructure projects, especially those in the railway sector. The plans never materialised.
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