May 26th, 2022 represented a milestone in the history of the Hellenic Romanian Bilateral Chamber of Commerce, celebrating the physical coming back of the Greek community after more than 2 years with pandemic and restrictions.
Bucharest – 1 July 2022. Over a winter weekend in the late 1990s an expat friend and I went to explore Transylvania by train from Bucharest, in which I made my first visit to Sibiu.
During the pandemic, we discovered working from home. Meetings were held digitally, and physical meetings were the exception. Now, after Corona, we witness a vivid discussion about how many days a week employees should come back to the office.
From the very beginning of the pandemic, a report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) warned that the labor market would be so distorted, that it would hardly recover in 2023. Obviously, the ILO experts put the blame on the pandemic for the labor crisis, stressing that the job losses destroyed the previous “five years of progress”.
Bucharest – 23 May 2022. One of my favourite Romanian expressions from the past is “munca patriotica in zadar” or, as I understand it, “patriotic (i.e. “volunteer”) work which generates no productive result”. Nowadays volunteering is now seen as an important part of civic virtue and corporate social responsibility, as well as potentially offering the volunteers advantages such as greater experience, skills, exercise and so on. This is, in my view, definitely a good thing for Romanian civil society and for business culture.
This question seems to be a bit far-fetched for most of you, but it is important to start thinking about it in time.
Why is a transition between active life and the “afterlife” so challenging? When we work over 30 or 40 years, we often get stuck in a hamster wheel with a very limited view of our lives. We often reduce perspectives only to work and cannot image a life without it. Over the years, we get used to all the privileges of business life, but also to all the social contacts we have during this period. This may quickly fade away when the game stops. I remember when I had to leave the corporate world, what I missed the most were contacts with colleagues, clients and other business partners.
We hear more and more the wording “good governance”. The international financial institutions increasingly base their financial support on the condition that their money finances reforms that ensure “good governance”. The concept is not new. It simply defines qualitatively the decision-making process and the process by which decisions are made. Good governance can be used in many contexts: corporate, international, national or local governance.
The first quarter was characterized by the intensification of trading activity on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) amid increased volatility that encompassed international capital markets.
