April 2025

Corina Roman was invited to speak at the 2025 edition of the CFO Conference, an event dedicated to finance leaders interested in aspects that, while relatively uncommon to the profession, impact the business environment at an unprecedented pace—such as industry transformations and emerging trends. Corina shared valuable insights that should be considered by those interested in a stable and sustainable evolution of a business in today’s dynamic economic landscape:

Takeaway 1: Investments are key to the development of each company and we need to know that there are legal instruments available to us to prepare companies for investors, such as enhancing companies’ financial status by converting debts towards shareholders to equity and similar.

Also, stakeholders need to be aware that there are now stricter rules applying to investments made in Romania. Following the latest amendments made to the FDI rules in December 2024, even Romanian investors investing in Romanian companies may be required to notify CEISD about their intention to make investments if

• their investment has a value that exceeds EUR 2 million and
• the investment is made in one of the industries considered by the Romanian law as strategic.

Therefore, a careful review of the above aspects should be made before making the investment, since the Romanian FDI rules have a broad scope and entail significant sanctions and risks (sanctions could be up to 10% of the global turnover of the investor and potential cancellation of the investment). For any M&A process, decision makers have to factor in these aspects in the timeline set for the project and evaluate the risks entailed.

Takeaway 2: It is critical for CFOs to be connected to the ever-changing business environment and to surround themselves by experts. This approach would enable them to generate increased added value for the stakeholders of the company.

Recent experience educated us on how an apparently minor matter such as a revision of the NACE Classification has caused delays for the Romanian companies in making day-to-day or more significant corporate amendments. More cautious companies prepared for these adjustments prior to the entrance into force of NACE Codes Rev. 3 and managed to navigate the changers without disruptions.

Takeaway 3: Artificial Intelligence is and will continue to be a significant part of the corporate life. Most probably its usage will expand in the future. However, we need to have clear procedures in place to mitigate risks, continue to invest in training our people to use it, as well as start training teams to provide quality data and design automatic processes to remove repetitive tasks. Companies should aim at becoming faster and better prepared to answer market demands.

Details about our Corporate/M&A practice are available HERE.