Romania is the latest country to set up a chapter of the Family Business Network, as the country’s nascent business sector embraces the family business model.
According to FBN Romania, approximately 50% of the private sector is made up of family businesses, although most of them are still in their first generation as Romania had one of the most oppressive communist economies up until the overthrow of the Nicolae Ceausescu regime in 1989.
Mihaela Harsan, the secretary general of FBN Romania, told CampdenFB that the new branch would help to nurture family firms, and “acknowledge their importance and claim fair rights and more attention from the government”.
“Everybody wins in the case of family businesses,” she said. “They employ people, train their workers, facilitate the development of private and public services around them, such as schools and infrastructures, and also support social activities.”
She added that the newly launched association would also offer family businesses advice on how to deal with issues such as financing, succession and how to attract non-family managers.
FBN Romania will also give members access to local and international networking events. “To be part of such an exclusive business group means you’ll have the chance be in the same room with some very important people in the world. Normally, this would be quite unrealistic, but it is possible with us,” Harsan said.
The new chapter was founded by some of the country’s best known entrepreneurs – Mircea Tudor, who heads MB Telecom, a Bucharest-based firm that makes customs security systems, Gabriel Marin, chief executive of IT company Omnilogic, who will serve as the chapter’s president, Sorin Preda, managing director of engineering firm Global Vision, and Florin Madar, who owns the distribution company Temad.
It comes six years after the FBN started expanding in eastern Europe, opening its first branch in Bulgaria in 2007. It has since expanded into the Ukraine, Hungary and Poland.
In 2010, it also launched FBN Adria, which is based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, but also oversees family businesses in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia.
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