How to make 94m-euro turnover with 1 employee

Energy trading has proven to be one of the most profitable businesses developed by extremely flexible companies in the last ten years, which manage to take full advantage of the massive restructuring that the energy sector faced in the early 2000s and of high-level political relations.

“All kinds of animals started to appear in this jungle,” says Ionuț Purica, energy expert, and a member of the Romanian Academy. Small companies managed to find their way into the energy supply chain (consisting of producers, suppliers, and consumers) and have seen their turnovers rise exponentially over the last few years.

For instance, Atel Energy Romania, held by Swiss group Alpiq with 10 billion euros in turnover, went from around 74,000 euros in 2003, the year of its first balance sheet, to a 93.8 million-euro business at the end of last year, according to Trade Registry data. According to the source, the entire business was generated by one employee. This compares with an around 80,000-euro productivity for an employee of Electrica, the biggest state-held energy distributor and supplier, about 1,200 times lower than the productivity of Atel Energy Romania’s sole employee.