Negritoiu: We changed teams completely

In one year in office as CEO of ING Bank Romania, Misu Negritoiu (photo) went as far as to change the bank’s entire teams for the equity markets, treasury and private banking departments. “We will start 2008 with a fully consolidated team, built with internal resources. We were too much dependent on one person or another, we were following a “one man show” model, on speculating market opportunities, although we needed to work as a team,” says Negritoiu. He explains the first step towards restructuring was integrating the equity markets division into the bank, over a year ago. “As a result of this move, the working environment became much more professional, and too strict for some people to fit in, who were used to a ‘Balkan’ working style.” The new equity markets team is headed by Florin Ilie, who is also the senior analyst a position he took over in April. The trading desk team now includes two people involved in sales, three traders and two analysts. “We were aware that we would no longer be the number one brokerage firm, but this was a strategic decision. Our team has become much more professional, after having had problems with the CNVM (National Securities Commission) regarding some of our operations in the past,” says Negritoiu. He used to be chairman of the Board of Directors of ING Securities in the past few years, but says he did not have the necessary ‘levers’ to intervene in executive decisions, so the solution to be able to control this entity was to integrate it into the bank.