“Owing to the fact that some two thirds of the group’s staff work in the auto division, it is inevitable that the main share of this number will be felt in this area. Considering the dramatic 60 percent drop in demand on the auto market in January, our restructuring is more than restrained compared to the market, said Petru Vaduva, Tiriac Holdings’ new Chief Executive Officer, yesterday for Business Standard. He also told Mediafax that the Tiriac holding will run a restructuring program in the coming months, to be able to deal with the new economic environment, with one of the measures being a 5-10 percent reduction in staff, temporary or permanent layoffs, of the some 3,000 employees it now has. Vaduva believes that reducing the personnel is the only way to protect the group, “and to maintain a breakeven in profitability.” The new CEO explained that, due to the current crisis, the holding’s auto division is the most difficult to manage, so that priorities for 2009 will be to maintain market share in terms of sales volume and not value.
According to specialists on the auto market, the Tiriac Holdings auto division claimed 20 percent of Romania’s auto market at the end of 2008, as second-largest player on the local import market, and third in terms of the entire market.
