For a quarter of century, Bucharest Chamber has been awarding excellence in business

The Bucharest Municipality’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIB) organised on Wednesday, at the Intercontinental Hotel, the 25th edition of the Rankings of Bucharest-based Companies, a landmark event for the Capital’s economic life. At the award ceremony, the managers of the best Bucharest-based companies were joined by top personalities from the Romanian economic, academic and diplomatic space, members of Government, officials from the Prefecture, district mayoralties and non-governmental associations – professional associations, chambers of commerce and employers’ organisations. “2018 is an entirely special year for us. The Bucharest Municipality’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry celebrates 150 years of uninterrupted activity in the service of the business community, years marked by challenges and successes alike. By a beautiful coincidence, 2018 is also the year that marks a quarter of century since, each autumn, we have been awarding excellence in all its forms, as part of the Company Rankings,” CCIB Chairman Ph.D. Prof. Eng. Sorin Dimitriu stated. According to the CCIB, the laureates were picked based on a severe and complex methodology, unitarily approved and applied at the level of the whole system of chambers. In establishing the final rankings, the following indicators were considered: net turnover, operational profit, operational profit rate, efficiency of human resources use and efficiency of using the capital invested. They were calculated based on 16 elements drawn from the financial statements that the companies lodged with the Finance Ministry and the National Trade Registry. “We bring under the limelight successful businesses, but we do not forget that there are people behind them: visionary entrepreneurs, consistent managers, creative teams, committed and full of passion. So, beyond rankings and methodologies, top-level financial results, we award those who want to be better than they are today and who have never stopped thinking outside the box,” the CCIB Chairman emphasised. According to the methodology, of the 130,653 companies headquartered in Bucharest, which lodged their financial statements for 2017, 41,987 companies met the eligibility criteria, namely 32.1 percent. Of them, the Bucharest Chamber awarded 6,922 companies, namely 16.5 percent of the total number of eligible companies. In what concerns their structure, most companies awarded by the Bucharest Chamber are active in the services sector (2,379 companies, 34 percent of the total), followed by companies in the commerce sector (1,973 companies, 29 percent), and industrial sector (1,384 companies, 20 percent). We note the fact that, this year, the CCIB awarded 415 companies active in the constructions sector, namely 6 percent of the total number of companies awarded. In the rankings compiled by the Bucharest Chamber, research, development and innovation sector companies hold a share of 6 percent (387 companies), tourism sector companies a share of 3 percent (240 companies), and agriculture, forestry and fishery sector companies a share of 2 percent (144 companies). To draw up rankings as objective as possible, the top five companies of each group were awarded based on five size classes: very large, large, mid-size, small and micro-enterprises. The 6,922 companies have a total turnover of almost EUR 69 billion, an operational profit of more than EUR 6 billion, and 578,060 employees. The laureates are part of the most dynamic and important business community of the country. With an unemployment rate of just 1.4 percent, in contrast to 3.4 percent at national level, Bucharest concentrates 23.2 percent of the total number of companies active in Romania, 20.6 percent of the total number of employees in the country, almost 30 percent of the sales area and retail area at national level, 16 percent of the value of Romanian exports, and 29 percent of the value of imports, approximately 60 percent of the country’s scientific activity, and 60.3 percent of the total FDI inflow that Romania has registered since 1990 (around EUR 46 billion). Aside from the awards conferred for economic results registered in 2017, the event also saw the conferring of trophies of excellence upon companies that ranked first in the competition of the elites in the last five years, namely the ‘George G. Assan’ Trophy for ‘The Romanian Brand of the Year,’ and the ‘Ioan V. Socec’ Trophy, as well as a series of special awards for the promotion of local entrepreneurship.