New Connex chief executive is bent on slashing costs

The main targets of the new Connex chief executive, Liliana Solomon, 41, are the reduction of costs and the increase in revenues, she told ZIARUL FINANCIAR exclusively during her first interview since taking over the company at the end of last year.

“As the market matures, we need to make sure that costs don”t go up faster than revenues,” she said. “Cost-cutting needs to be a goal for any corporate leader.”

Solomon, who became one of the most powerful women in the Romanian business world when she was appointed to run Connex, will also pursue an improvement in the average revenue per user, an essential indicator in the mobile telephony business.

At the same time, she set out to restore this mobile telephony operator back in its leading position on the market. Connex Vodafone is slightly at a disadvantage compared with its archrival Orange Romania, both in terms of service revenues and numbers of clients, according to the latest data revealed by the two operators. Connex concluded September 2005 with 5.52 million customers, while Orange registered 6.2 million customers at that time.

“The main goal I have as head of Connex Vodafone is to become the market leader in Romania again,” Liliana Solomon said.

The offensive will be sustained by the launch of new offers for 3G service customers, as well as by the expansion of the territorial coverage from 14 cities at the moment to at least 20 cities by yearend, she said.

This summer will see the launch of the Vodafone Live! 3G services, a service package Vodafone is selling on most developed markets where it is present.

“Live! is an infotainment product. It will be launched this summer and will provide a richer content than the current 3G offer from Connex Vodafone, mainly because we will benefit from Vodafone”s global contracts.”

“Once Live! is launched we will be competing with the iPod,” Solomon said, meaning that the 3G services are largely built around multimedia and entertainment, “an industry that will develop tremendously.”

Mobile telephony operator Connex Vodafone is the sixth branch in the Vodafone Group in terms of number of clients, after Germany, Italy, UK, Japan and Spain, according to Solomon.

Liliana Solomon previously worked for Deutsche Telekom as executive vice-president of the management division, and for T-Mobile UK and Cable & Wireless as chief financial officer.

She holds a doctoral degree in physics and speaks four foreign languages. She left Romania in the summer of 1989. “After graduation I was assigned to a loom weaving factory in Cluj. Not long after that I realised I had no prospects, therefore I left,” she recalls. “When I made the decision to come back to Romania, the professional and personal sides mattered equally.” Her parents, who are former university professors, are living in Cluj, while her husband is a Romanian and works in London. mihai.musatoiu@zf.ro