Turning challenges faced by Romanian mid-sized companies into opportunities
Since 1999 our investment team has worked on over 150 mid-market M&A and corporate finance assignments in Romania and had exploratory discussions with hundreds of founders/MDs of Romanian SMEs. Here are some of the challenges and the lessons learned and how they can be turned into opportunities:
Common Challenges for Romanian Mid-sized Companies
Many SMEs lack skills in financial management, reporting and control, leveraging IT infrastructure to gain operational efficiencies, managing complex operational processes, ability to raise capital, corporate governance
Since a lot of the successful Romanian businesses were started in the 90s, Romania has an aging population of entrepreneurs owning medium and large companies with no strategy and corporate governance in place to ensure successful succession planning
Lack discipline in working capital and risk management, fragile financing support from the banking sector, lack of management experience, over-leveraged balance sheets, no sources of permanent capital;
Investment Opportunity
✓Augment management teams, address senior recruitment and corporate governance issues
✓Guidance/advice on improving processes (including management and financial reporting)and harness the power of IT
✓Hands-on support on strategy, financing, working capital management, capital structure, business development initiatives (add-on acquisitions etc)
✓Deal opportunities to provide exit or a succession planning strategy for founders
✓Potential bolt-on acquisition targets
