Cambiotti packs his bags

Antonio Cambiotti, 52, is to leave the management of the domestic branch of Italian oil giant Eni. His place will be filled by another Italian, Paolo Mazza, who until now has been running Agip operations in Hungary.

Cambiotti became chief of Agip Romania in 2001 and, by the end of his mandate, had managed to rid the Italian retailer of losses. As a result, the company has reported profits for the first time since 1999, according to the preliminary results calculated in line with international standards.

“Last year, we made an operating profit of around 1.5 million euros and I think this will be the first time since 1999 that we don’t have negative results,” Antonio Cambiotti, Agip Romania chairman, told Ziarul Financiar.

Agip entered the Romanian market in 1997 and invested about 20 million euros. It currently has a network of 21 filling stations and last year created turnover in region of 40 million euros, which was similar to previous years.

Agip Romania SA is owned by Eni International B.V. Amsterdam (99.95%) and by private shareholders.

“Agip’s strategy is for network expansion following the decision to stay on the Romanian market and expand,” said Cambiotti at the end of his mandate. Throughout his time at Agip he battled hard to cut costs within the company network amid difficult market conditions.

Cambiotti will return to Rome, where he will take up a management position in the fuel distribution department responsible for markets outside Italy.

This week also saw him resign from the position of chairman of ASPetrol, an association created in 2002 in which all the international oil companies on the Romanian market are represented – Shell (Anglo-Dutch), MOL (Hungary), OMV (Austria), Agip (Italy) and LukOil (Russia). Shell is currently involved in transferring its entire network to MOL following a deal struck at the end of November 2004.

In this capacity, Cambiotti has been one of the harshest critics of the policy of the former state-owned company Petrom, whereby the leader of the domestic market caused its rivals to incur losses by setting prices that had nothing to do with international quotations. Petrom was recently taken over by OMV, and some days ago the company announced it would be liberalising prices, after which prices are to be adjusted on a weekly basis in line with the model used for European fuel markets.

The new chairman of ASPetrol will be Karoly Robak, the executive manager of MOL Romania. adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro