SNAPSHOT:

Manager: Christine Gantcheva
The job: Chairman of the rating committee and member of the board, Global Ratings plc.
The CV: Master’s degree in finance, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, 2002; BA business administration, University of Portsmouth, 1997; director of public finance directorate at Municipal Bank (December 2004 to 2006); member of the board of directors, Sofiyska Voda (October 2000 to 2006); financial adviser to the mayor of Sofia (December 1999 to 2005); rating adviser to the cities of Sofia, Plovdiv and Blagoevgrad (May 1998 to 2006); head of investment banking division at Municipal Bank (November 2000 to 2004); expert in Municipal Bank head office (May 1998 to May 1999); audit assistant, Ernst and Young, London (June 1994 to July 1997).
Foreign languages: English, French.

Neville Cope was her team leader during her three years in London at Ernst and Young as an audit assistant.

“He taught me that the success of a product depends not solely on the manager or any individual member of the team, but on how well people work together within the team. I promised myself that I became a manager, I would follow the ‘flat’ team approach.”

By this she means a modern approach to team dynamics, one that is less hierarchical in favour of emphasising co-operation, consultation and delegation.

“I also promised myself, and I am very proud that I have been keeping the promise these past 10 years, to give opportunities to and to train young, well-qualified Bulgarian graduates, both men and women.”

Building the right team, she says, begins with properly selecting people.

“As a manager I never rely only on my own opinion.” Probably unusually for recruitment procedures in Bulgaria, Gantcheva involves other staff in choosing new employees. Rather than presenting a new employee simply as a fait accompli after a closed-door hiring process, she involves her team in selecting newcomers. After a pre-selection process, done because currently any post advertised in Bulgaria attracts a deluge of applications, some possibly suitable and many others not, staff are drawn into the decision process.

“When you select a new person, people need to be comfortable with the person, not only from a professional point of view in terms of their skills and experience, but also in assessing how well they will fit in. The new person needs to become a real member of the team from a human point of view.”

This does not mean, she says, that the newcomer will become the closest friend of all the other members of staff, “but someone that everyone will be comfortable working with eight to 10 hours a day”.

“I ask for opinions and it is open for everyone to say what he or she thinks. After that, a decision is made.”

Choosing the right person is important to her because her approach is to delegate to a high degree, and to expect each person to perform perfectly.

Staff recruitment is an important theme now for Global Ratings, which, after just more than a year of operations, is facing a substantially growing client base and will be looking to recruit to meet demand.

At 39, Gantcheva has a solid professional background that has made her well-fitted for her current role.

After the three years at Ernst and Young, ending 10 years ago, she spent a year from May 1998 at Sofia’s Municipal Bank head office, working on the organisation and co-ordination of the international activities of the bank. For four year from November 2000, she headed the bank’s investment banking division.

The next couple of years were crowded ones. Between 1998 and 2006, she was the rating adviser to the cities of Sofia, Plovdiv and Blagoevgrad, and between December 1999 and 2005, she was financial adviser to the mayor of Sofia, responsible for the due diligence, financial analysis, negotiation of the terms and conditions and follow-up supervision of projects including the city of Sofia’s first eurobond issue, the $153 million Sofiyska Voda (Sofia Water) concession project, the 32 million euro Sofia heating rehabilitation project, the $120 million Sofia subway extension project, and the 35 million euro Sofia transport rehabilitation project.

Between 2004 and 2006, she was direct of the public finance directorate of Municipal Bank.

December 2005 saw her appointed as a board member and chairperson of the rating committee of Global Ratings and since January this year, she is executive director of DNG Assets plc.

“I very much like to work with people and I am a very team-oriented person, I enjoy communicating with people. While I was working at Ernst and Young, I discovered that I could develop my presentation skills as well. At a time in Bulgaria when people were somehow shy and, while open-minded, not very assertive, this was an asset.”

She says that when she started her job at Municipal Bank, like any bank it was a bureaucratic and hierarchical structure with very strict rules and procedures. “I started to build a very young and open-minded team because my goal was to develop an international team capable of coping with projects that were being done for the first time in Bulgaria. One such project was the very first rating of Sofia, in 1998.”

In Bulgaria at that time, she says, no one knew what an international-grade rating was.

“Following that project, my team at Municipal Bank had to develop the first eurobond issue. It was a pioneering project because at that time the state had issued no eurobonds. The people that I selected were learning about international and European experience in dealing with such tasks, and at the same time, we had to succeed because a lot of things for the city of Sofia depended on this 50 million euro, such as the renovation of streets and boulevards, the development of some new sites.”

Asked whether she agrees with perceptions that latter-day Bulgaria still evidences differences in business culture with that of the West, she says: “I never found any difference between the Western and Bulgarian culture at work. People are very alike all over the world, I think. Perhaps, when they go out for entertainment and relaxation, there may be some differences. What is interesting is that 10 years ago in Bulgaria, I found that there were very hierarchical structures in business, of a kind that I had only read about in textbooks, while in the Western world, the valued model of management is the flat structure, with team-building, with a co-operative rather than competitive approach among the various units. But, little by little, I see that this model of management is entering into Bulgaria. Recently, among my clients in Bulgaria, I do not see this hierarchical approach, the angry boss who controls everything, dictates and never asks for opinions.

“I am really happy to see this change, because the modern approach is very important for a good atmosphere at work and for people to be motivated. People are not only motivated by money. A very significant part of their satisfaction depends on how much they like their jobs and feel committed to them. A sense of reward after success in a task is not only reliant on rates of pay.”

Looking back at the performance of Global Ratings since its founding a year and a few months ago, she says: “I am very proud, first of all, that we, and I emphasise ‘we’ because this is a team, decided to set up a business that is completely new to Bulgaria and I am very proud of the fact that this agency currently has about 30 clients, in the short time since we started. We developed, I believe, a very good quality product. This is the reason for our success. We do not advertise our products and services. The success of this company thus far has been the result of the satisfaction of our clients and our good co-operation with the media in Bulgaria.”

She says that many clients have organised successful financing on the basis of ratings received. This has yielded beneficial word-of-mouth for the agency.

After the agency went through the process of rating the municipality of Chepelare, a series of much larger municipalities, including Shoumen, Pleven, Lovech and Dobrich approached the agency.

The decision by such clients to use the agency, she says, has a benefit not only in financial terms but serves as evidence of transparency.

Gantcheva says that the existence of a rating analysis very often leads to the attraction of investment and foreign interest.

“As you know, foreign companies, banks and suppliers have difficulty in reading Bulgarian budgetary and auditing standards affecting municipalities, and when they read our analysis, which is done according to international standards, they can decide whether they are interested in making an investment.”

The Basel II standards, which came into effect in Bulgaria on January 1 this year, oblige banks in Bulgaria to make judgments on risk when lending. In this, the agency can play a vital role.

“We expect a real boom in 2007 and 2008 and a big extension in the scope of our work. We are thinking of extending our team because of the number of contracts we have now.”

Global Ratings has a staff complement of 30, 10 in the analytical team and the rest representatives around Bulgaria. In the next few years, these representatives are to become more operationally independent in marketing and analysis.

“Rating decisions, as you know, are not taken by one person. We have a rating committee of five people elected by the shareholders’ meeting. In other words, it is completely independent of the management board of the company. The rating committee’s decisions are not related to the price a customer pays. We have developed the structure of the company so that we have a Chinese wall between these aspects. European rules for international rating agencies require such independence.”

Asked about competition within the field, Gantcheva says: “We are the latest in terms of setting up a national credit rating agency, but have proved in one year our success. We are the top leader in municipal ratings. We have 20 municipal ratings currently. Competition exists. At the same time, we have been working for almost eight years as consultants to two out of three biggest international credit rating agencies”.

While Bulgaria’s larger cities, meaning Sofia, Varna and Plovdiv can afford to seek financing on international markets, other cities need national ratings so as to be competitive in seeking to access European Union structural funds. They need ratings to apply for bridging finance, given that EU funding is paid out only after a project is completed.

“A rating is also very positive for the image of a municipality and as a means of attracting investors both on the domestic market and from abroad.”

EU accession has meant a lot of business since January 1 this year.

Gantcheva says that when she gives presentations, rather than giving a marketing pitch for the company, the emphasis is on the meaning and usefulness of ratings. “I devote a lot of time to promoting the concept of ratings in general.”

Fortunately, after a sharp learning curve, the level of understanding in Bulgaria has improved substantially.

Asked about her vision for the future, Gantcheva says: “I sincerely believe that in 2008 to 2012 we shall concentrate as a company on extending our business within the region, Serbia, Macedonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania”.

When it is pointed out to her that she seems not to make a distinction between personal and corporate ambitions, she responds: “When you create something new in which you believe for more than eight years, you put your heart into it. I have had various offers for very interesting jobs in the financial sector, but I strongly believe that I will be a manager at Global Ratings for the next five years. I would think of leaving this job only for two reasons. One, if it became boring, which is impossible because the process of development is stressful but definitely not boring. Second, if Global Ratings became so successful and stable and big that it no longer needed an everyday effort.”

Her role is certainly not office-bound, with extensive travel around the country to client municipalities, and regular news conferences in various cities and towns to announce findings. “I am ‘at the office’ even at 8am, at home having a telephone conversation with a mayor.”

Finally, she laughs: “Please add in that I am very keen on skiing and windsurfing, so that I do not come across as completely living only through my job!”