NV today awarded the ten most valuable companies in Romania at the 27th ZF Gala, the most important business event of the year. The 100 most valuable companies in Romania have been valued every year for the last four at over 100 billion euros, managing to reach a record level of 126.6 billion euros in 2024. Compared to the first edition of the catalog of the most valuable companies in Romania, edited by ZF, the cumulative value of the first 100 companies increased by 65% in euros. The threshold of 100 billion euros was one step away from being reached in 2007 as well, in full economic boom and before the economic crisis that left traces in the local business at that time.See the top 10 below: 10th place – Unicredit Bank.Mihaela Lupu, Unicredit CEO: I dedicate this award to my colleagues, colleagues from Unicredit, colleagues from Alpha. We are very happy that we managed to finish well, quickly and at the same time we managed to have a fantastic from a business point of view. Thank you colleagues, thank you NV! We completed the migration of Alpha Bank to Unicredit in nine months and at the same time we took over new business. 9th place – KauflandLoredana Samoila, PR manager: It is an award that comes at the end of an anniversary year, 20 years of Kaufland Romania, and we are grateful to you. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all the support during these years. I grew up together with Romania for Romania. From 1,000 employees in 2005 to over 18,000 today. We are the largest private employer in Romania and one of the investors in the communities where we operate, with a budget of over 9.5 million euros annually. We employ somewhere between 70 and 100 people at each store we open. Kaufland's rate of expansion has grown exponentially in the last three years. If initially we opened around 5-6 stores per year, we ended up opening 10-14 stores per year. Although there were years full of challenges, we decided to continue investing despite all the difficulties and challenges.8th place – Dante InternationalOleg Roibu – General Counsel Group eMAG: eMAG is about a buying experience and about as many services as possible and this award is the result of the investments we have made in Romanian technology over the years, the trust we have in entrepreneurship and the fact that we are trying to build companies that we internationalize and invest in technology. Last year eMAG Romania had a 7% increase, and the eMAG group grew by 12%. For this year, we proposed investments of 1.2 billion lei. This growth would not have been possible without the 64,000 entrepreneurs, mostly Romanian, who manage to sell in the region and offer our consumers over 32 million products.7th place – BCRSergiu Manea, CEO: Thank you very much! I would like to start by saying happy birthday. We need you every day and we need you to tell us what you think. This award is extraordinary for us and I hope our customers hear us first, with whom we try to build a relationship of trust every day. If we want to build a competitive economy, we have to do it, no one else will do it. I would start by removing the barriers that separate us from each other today. Our duty is to build a very strong economy that has the potential to grow 5% every year. BCR has 3 million customers.6th place – Pavăl HoldingAndreea Drugă, Managing Director, Pavăl Holding: I am happy to be here with you, I am happy to accept this award on behalf of the Pavăl family and to be with the biggest companies in Romania. I think that this award is not only a recognition of the achievements of the Pavăl Holding and Dedeman companies, but rather a proof that through vision, determination and a lot of innovation, benchmark companies can be built in the market. This work would not have been possible without our employees, my colleagues from the entire holding company, without our partners and without our customers, to whom we thank very much for being with us all these years. I would also like to wish a happy birthday to Ziar Financiar and congratulate you for all your activity! We build partnerships, we are with our clients, both in times when they are doing well and in times when they have difficulties. Our goal is to build for the long term. We have been in Romania for several generations, we have zero plans to sell or exit.5th place – Banca TransilvaniaSergiu Mircea, Marketing & Communication Executive Director: Thank you very much and first and foremost: Happy Birthday NV! 27 years is a remarkable achievement in today's environment and I think we all enjoy it. We are somehow praised in the surrounding countries when we discuss with colleagues or partners that Romania has a strong business press and I think we can be proud of that, it is a very good thing. For Banca Transilvania, 2025 was a full year, it was a difficult year like for the rest of the economy, but it was a very good year. I started with the completion of the merger between Banca Transilvania and OTP Bank and I would like to congratulate my colleagues who were very close to this merger. Any job or any business you do, you have to be strongly involved and give your best, it will work.4th place – RomgazRăzvan Popescu, Romgaz CEO: Good evening and thank you for this award. It is an honor for me to accept it on behalf of the entire Romgaz collective. I would say that it was a year full of challenges. We managed to invest almost 3 billion lei in the first 9 months. We managed to increase the turnover. We managed to drill the deepest well in the history of the company. Let's start the evaluation for Azomures. Let's get ready to supply gas to end customers. And obviously, let's do the second issue of bonds worth 500 million euros just last month. It was a full year, but at the end of it we rejoice and reap the fruits of sustained work. The year 2026 will be a year in which Romgaz will have to invest another 1 billion euros in order to complete the Neptun Deep project. We are both on schedule and within the budget limits we assumed when we entered this project. We want to become not only a national player with a 115-year tradition in Romania, but also a regional player on the gas market.Local 3 – UiPathIonuţ Valentin Sas, Senior Vice President Finance: Thank you very much to all our partners and the ecosystem, some of those who believed in us from the beginning are still here. I think we will have to reinvent ourselves. At this moment we are redefining a new technology with which we want to become market leaders again. What we started last year as an idea is now at the time of implementation in an extremely competitive market. I hope we reinvent ourselves and exceed our expectations. In the Agentic AI area, the market is extremely dynamic and plays at a much tougher level from a competitive point of view. There is, however, a competitive advantage. We consider ourselves a Switzerland of all platforms. We are agnostic with over 700 technologies. We can communicate and be the link between multiple platforms, and our agents can collaborate. We have a fundamental ethics component that we implement in the platform and we still have the human to make the decision.2nd place – HidroelectricaBogdan BUCIU – Head of Cabinet, President of the HIDROELECTRICA Directorate: I would like to congratulate NV for the 27 years of authentic press. This year we announced that we exceeded the threshold of 1 million customers, which marks on a symbolic level that we have the largest growth in the supply segment and probably the most spectacular in Romania of all time. We are rethinking our business strategy and moving towards hybridization. We are trying to optimize what we have at the objective level so that we no longer depend only on hydraulics. We are also moving towards the floating solar or wind area and the storage area.1st place – OMV PetromAdrian Nicolaescu, Refinery and Marketing Value Chain Optimization Director and President of the OMV Petrom Marketing Board of Directors: We thank Ziar Financiar for this gala where performance is recognized. In the 27 years we have had 22 nominations on the podium, this evening's award was really a surprise. Starting from last week, the capitalization of OMV Petrom exceeded 60 billion lei, and for a Romanian company it is an exceptional thing. We supply energy in all its forms in Romania and in Eastern Europe. We are proud of this, the basis of this achievement are our colleagues, our partners, our customers, but also the trust we receive from investors. We have charging stations in over 100 locations. There are also the partners from Renovatio, a company we acquired last year with another 600 locations.NV also awarded 15 special awards for trust in Romania: 1. Vodafone Romania. Alexandra Olaru, Legal and External Affairs Director2. e-Infra. Gianina Pelea, CEO e-infra3. 5toGo. Radu Savopol, co-founder &CEO4. REPORT. Cosmin Savu-Cristescu, managing partner5. CODATA. Horia Sabo, CEO Codata Software Solutions6. Nusco. Michele Nusco, CEO7. CrisTim. Radu Timis Jr, CEO CrisTim8. Genesis. Ioana Necula, CEO9. George Glasses11. Alfa Group. Mihai Măcelaru, CEO12. Transgaz. Cătălin Tuţă, Director of the Investor Relations and Sustainability Department13. Bilka. Horatiu Tepeş, founder14. Antibiotics. Liviu Vătavu, Legal Director and Corporate Governance15. Ahold Delhaize/PROFI. Oana Dumitriu, Brand Marketing Director Mega Image
For other news, analyses, articles and business information in real time, follow NV on WhatsApp Channels