”I am a mercenary,” Dusan Wilms says smilingly, when asked about his recent return to the helm of the cash & carry network, which he had left five years ago. ”At Metro, there is a bunch of ‘soldiers’ among us, me included, who can, for a time, fill the position of general – even though I am, let’s say, a lieutenant.” Metaphors aside, Wilms (who returned to Romania after acting as chief operating officer of Real, the hypermarket division of the German group) means to say that the manager’s skills are more important than the position.

In addition, home-grown managers are now favoured, whether in Romania, Bulgaria, the Netherlands or Italy. For now, he does a lot of travelling across Romania to see the stores, as this is one of his duties for his first 100 days after taking up office. ”There isn’t a very big difference between what I am doing now and what I was doing in the past from a managerial point of view,” says Wilms, who managed Metro between 1999 and 2005, when the German merchant launched its most aggressive expansions. The network, which has reached 24 units and posted 1.4 billion-euro turnover last year, is focusing on ”maintaining profitability and increasing the brand awareness,” says Wilms, who shies away from giving figures when it comes to the sales target or the profit margin.

On the other hand, a new target emerges – the opening of new stores, since the cash & carry network ended its expansion period a few years ago, moving on to a time of consolidating the business. ”We will definitely open a store next year and, perhaps another one, depending on our needs,” says the Metro CEO, who does not indicate a precise location for the new units, but specifies that Bucharest is very interesting, adding that he does not rule out any opportunity. In fact, for financially-strong networks, opportunity is the key word, because after a time when the real estate market had become ”unrealistic”, now things are settling down and land prices are making expansion an option again. There is enough room for expansion, according to Wilms, given that modern commerce merely accounted for 42% of the market last year.