Romanian OMV Petrom brings second woman to the Executive Board, extends CEO’s mandate

Romanian oil & gas group OMV Petrom, which is part of Austrian group OMV, will have two women in the new five-member Executive Board, whose mandate will end in April 2019. The group’s Supervisory Board named a new executive director for the gas and power division and extended CEO Mariana Gheorghe’s mandate for another four years. Romanian Lacramioara Diaconu-Pintea will take on as member in charge of the Downstream Gas division. She will replace Cristian Secosan, whose term ends on April 17. The Gas and Power division, which changed name into Downstream Gas, had the weakest results last year for OMV Petrom, contributing to the 56% decline in net profits. The division ended the year with an operating loss (EBIT) of EUR 184 million, mainly due to one-off expenses as OMV Petrom recorded a loss on its investment in the gas power plant in Brazi. Lacramioara Diaconu-Pintea has been working for Petrom since September 1998 before the company was privatised. She started as an economist, then became head of strategy and privatization, then, after privatization, she took charge of the company’s M&A and capital markets relations department. In October 2007, she became director of Petrom’s power division. In January 2012, she moved to Vienna and became vice president for investor relations of the OMV Group, Petrom’s majority shareholder. Since September 2013, she has been head of business support for OMV’s exploration and production division. Starting April, she will coordinate one of OMV Petrom’s three divisions, which last year sold some EUR 600 million worth of natural gas and electricity. Romanian Gabriel Selischi remains in charge of OMV Petrom’s exploration and production division, which changed its name to Upstream. He will coordinate the group’s exploration efforts in the Black Sea, which should reveal in the following years if the gas findings are commercially viable or not. Briton Neil Anthony Morgan will continue to head the refining and marketing division, now called Downstream, and Austrian Andreas Matje remains Chief Financial Officer (CFO), a position he took in January 2013. Romanian Mariana Gheorghe will hold on to her CEO position for the next four years. A former EBRD banker, she became a member of Petrom’s administrative board in 2004 after the Romanian state privatised the company. In June 2006, she became OMV Petrom’s CEO. Mariana Gheorghe is the most powerful woman CEO in Romania and one of the world’s most powerful women in business, according to Fortune magazine. Romania’s 20 most powerful women Women head only 8 of the top 100 companies in Romania