László GesztiPresident of INA Management Board, László Geszti has resigned from his spot. Officially it was said he resigned because of the health reasons, but from unofficial sources Nacional learned that the MOL Management for some time wasn't satisfied with the way Geszti managed Ina.

In the last eight months, which Geszti spent as a head of Ina, MOL's image in Croatian public worsened. Although he had experience with managing Croatian oil company, Geszti didn't manage to adapt to difficult times when Ina was faced with grave financial troubles and numerous suspicions about legality of it's privatisation.

Closed up in managing Ina

In such times, Geszi showed himself as a very hard and non flexible manager with the professional reputation of very arrogant behaviour even towards his colleagues at Ina.

He was especially restrained in his dealings with media. For example, from the moment he taking control over Ina till today he refused all interview requests from Croatian journalists. That added up to a very bad climate between the coworkers in the company, and in the end it reflected upon the business results of the company. On the other hand, the image of the company was worsened in public, especially after media reported about suspicious deals during the negotiations and signing of the latest shareholders agreement between Croatian government and MOL. That could result with another fall in business and social rating of the company.

Removal because od bad managment of Ina?

Taking all things in the consideration, heads of MOL decided they have to change the way and approach to managing INA, and that change should be headed by the new head of INA Zoltán Áldott.

Zoltán Áldott came to MOL in 1995. From 1995 to 1997 he managed the MOL Privatization Department, and from 1997 until 1999 he was director of the Capital Markets. At one period he was deputy Chairman of Supervisory Board of INA d.d. and an Exploration and Production Executive Vice President.

Few of the people know he was one of the negotiator in the initial negotiations between Hungary and Croatia about merging Ina and MOL. Later, that negotiations failed because of lack of political will, but Áldott was part of the process of privatization Slovakian oil company Slovnaft.

Áldotti has a reputation as very capable manager, with a broad experience in working in foreign countries, and has a good knowledge of Ina. His appointment to the head of Ina could be read as a part of changing Ina's image in public, and that the management will go through big changes. His taking over Ina could be seen as a positive step forward to returning Ina to a position of one of the strongest oil companies in this part of the world.