At the twelfth traditional conference ‘Women in Business’, held at Lauba in Zagreb, Lider announced the ten most powerful women in Croatian business for 2022.

The business weekly Lider has once again named the ten most powerful women in Croatian business at its traditional conference ‘Women in Business’, which took place today at Lauba in Zagreb. The title of the most powerful woman was once again awarded to Lada Tedeschi Fiorio, a member of the Management Board of Atlantic Group.

New faces on this year’s ranking list include Iva Pripuz Špekuljuk (C.I.O.S. Group) and Jasna Mandac (Zagrebačka Bank), while Ivana Bratanić (Koncern Agram) makes a return.

For the twelfth consecutive year, Lider organizes an international meeting of women and for the seventeenth year publishes its annual ranking of the three hundred most powerful women. In the selection, we apply the criterion of managerial power, i.e., the total revenues of the companies they lead, with the help of our partner Dun & Bradstreet. In selecting the ten most powerful, we also apply some ‘softer’ criteria – we are interested in their influence, not only in the companies they preside over but also on the overall economy and society.

Who made it to the top of the ranking of the most powerful?

1. Lada Tedeschi Fiorio, Atlantic Group

Leaders have the responsibility to provide the same opportunity to women and men and to create an atmosphere that includes transparent criteria based on results. It is up to women to fight and not give up.

The title of the most powerful of the powerful on Lider’s ranking list was once again taken by a member of the Management Board of Atlantic Group. Tedeschi Fiorio has ranked first for the fourth consecutive year. As the Vice President of Atlantic Group for Corporate Strategy and Growth, she manages strategies, merger and acquisition activities, and the development of new products. Her managerial power increased by 8.6 percent in one year, reaching 770 million euros, which was the consolidated revenue of Atlantic Group last year. This is one side of the story, the one we measure with exact business revenues from the previous year. The other side is currently unquestionable, although unfortunately not exactly measurable, is Tedeschi Fiorio’s influence on the rise of inflation in Croatia. We dare to claim that inflation this year would have been even higher had the Management and owners of Atlantic Group not made business decisions at the expense of their own profitability. This year’s significant increases in raw materials, packaging materials, energy, and services were not fully passed on to the rise in their retail prices, thus somewhat slowing down the price increases of their competitors, but they consciously and deliberately sacrificed a third of their profit.

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Lada Tedeschi Fiorio

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2. Martina Dalić, Podravka

To all women in responsible and leadership positions, I say to perform them with full passion and energy because there is no reason to stand a step behind male colleagues.

Dalić is a prominent figure in the domestic business scene and the first woman to head the Management Board of Podravka in its 75-year history, whose size has been built primarily with the help of Vegeta, also an invention of a woman, Professor Zlata Bartl. The power of Martina Dalić, who is in second place among the ten most powerful women in Croatian business for the second consecutive year, does not stem only from the fact that the consolidated revenue of the Podravka Group last year amounted to 621 million euros, which was 3.3 percent higher than the previous year and that a record high profit of 245 million kuna was achieved, but also from the fact that Podravka is the largest and most important company in northern Croatia, on which many cooperators and other suppliers depend; not to mention the nearly 4500 employees in Koprivnica, Rovinj, and Zagreb.

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Martina Dalić, Podravka

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3. Jasenka Joukhadar, Medical Intertrade

In our company, we have as many women as men, and this division came naturally according to preferences. When there is a crisis, we all try to find solutions, and the best come when we work together.

Jasenka Joukhadar first made it to Lider’s ranking of the ten most powerful last year, although that was the last thing she wanted to happen in her life. But it happened. She became a widow and the sole owner of the business empire she built for thirty years with her husband Mohamed Radwan Joukhadar: one of the largest wholesalers in Croatia, Medical Intertrade, the Joukhadar pharmacy chain, and the manufacturing company Yasenka. She bravely took over the main managerial position and moved forward. In the next year, she increased her managerial power by five percent to 330 million euros. Medical Intertrade is also the unofficial holder of the title ‘largest company owned by a woman in Croatia’.

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Jasenka Joukhadar, President of the Management Board of Medical Intertrade

photo Cropix

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4. Anita Letica, Philip Morris Zagreb

The cross-section of the company is a cross-section of society. Therefore, alignment and equality are important. We lead the transformation of the tobacco industry because we have diverse talents who dare to express their opinions.

The President of the Management Board of Philip Morris Zagreb has made a new step forward on the ranking of the most powerful. She has been on our list continuously for the eighth consecutive year, exactly as long as it has been since she became the President of the Management Board of Philip Morris Zagreb, a subsidiary of one of the largest tobacco companies in the world. She is responsible for the Croatian and Slovenian markets. Under her management, the company has recorded dizzying growth. She took over the leadership of the company at a time when revenues were below 300 million euros, and by the end of last year, they had risen to over 470 million euros. The continuity of growth in her managerial power has not been stopped by the pandemic, the earthquake, the war in Ukraine, or inflation.

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Anita Letica

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5. Iva Pripuz Špekuljuk, C.I.O.S. grupa

Iva is a textbook example of good preparation of a family successor for taking over the main managerial position in the company at the moment when the founder decides to retire. She is a graduate economist and has been working in various companies of the C.I.O.S. group since she was twenty-four. In most of the Group’s members, she was either a board member or on their supervisory boards. She became the head of C.I.O.S. two years ago, and this year she made it to Lider’s ranking of the ten most powerful women in Croatian business for the first time, thanks to her managerial power, which strongly jumped last year on the wings of global demand growth for secondary raw materials, reaching 375.5 million euros.

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Iva Pripuz Špekuljuk, President of the Management Board of C.I.O.S. Group.
Photo: Neja Markicevic/CROPIX

photo Cropix

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6. Liana Keserić, Raiffeisenbank Austria

Banking is traditionally a male profession; however, in five to ten years, we will reach equilibrium. At RBA Croatia, we have 70 percent women, and we are specific compared to Austria.

The President of the Management Board of Raiffeisenbank Austria increased her managerial power to 281.5 million euros last year while managing the fourth largest bank in Croatia. Thus, she successfully returned the bank’s business results to the levels achieved before the pandemic in 2020. She has been at RBA for over twenty years. Before being appointed President of the Management Board at the beginning of 2020, she was a board member responsible for operational business, IT, and organization, as well as managing processes and projects. This is her third year on the list of the ten most powerful. She is the only woman in a top managerial position in one of the ten largest banks in Croatia.

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Liana Keserić, Raiffeisen Bank

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7. Daliborka Kranjčić, KTC

Managing generational differences is becoming increasingly prominent, and employers face a significant challenge in how to approach new generations while also setting boundaries. Women have more empathy, and that will give them an advantage.

Looking at economic activities, the highest number of women in Croatia are employed in retail trade. In contrast, their employers are mostly men. The largest retail company in Croatia headed by a woman is KTC from Križevci, whose operations are led by Daliborka Kranjčić. She has been on our ranking list for the third consecutive year. She first made it to the list in 2020 after being entrusted with the position of President of the Management Board of the company where she had previously spent 26 years, of which thirteen years she was a member of the Management Board and the CEO. Her managerial power, according to the company’s revenue for the previous year, is 226 million euros.

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Daliborka Kranjčić, KTC

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8. Nataša Rapaić, Hrvatski Telekom

The task of leaders is to share their experiences, learned lessons, best practices, and help our employees, colleagues, and peers to realize their potential while we learn from them. In shaping new generations of future leaders, we simultaneously shape ourselves.

Nataša Rapaić is one of the faces of Hrvatski Telekom, where she arrived in 2003 after building her career in Spain as a financial analyst in the economic office of the Spanish Embassy and the investment department of Grupo Caixa Galicia, as a consultant at Europraxis Consulting in Madrid, and working on various marketing projects at Telefónica Móviles. At HT, she has changed several managerial positions and advanced to a board member in ten years. She is a board member and the Chief Operating Officer for private customers of Hrvatski Telekom. She is also on our ranking list this year in eighth place, but it should be noted that her managerial power has significantly increased in the past year to over one billion euros.

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Nataša Rapaić, Hrvatski Telekom

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9. Jasna Mandac, Zagrebačka banka

Jasna Mandac is another debutante on this year’s ranking list. Since last year, she has advanced to the position of a board member of Zagrebačka Bank, where she has been building her career since 1997. After several specialist and leadership positions, she became the Director of Finance and then the Director of Strategy, Planning, Budgeting, and Controlling. She also worked as the Director of Asset and Liability Management and then as the Director of Market Liquidity and Operational Risks, Risk Integration, and Internal Validation. She was also a board member responsible for finance at UniCredit Bulbank, the largest bank in Bulgaria. Her managerial power amounts to 765.6 million euros.

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Jasna Mandac, Zagrebačka banka

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10. Ivana Bratanić, Koncern Agram

After a year off, Bratanić has returned among the most powerful women in Croatian business. She was on the ranking list for several years as the President of the Management Board of Euroherc, and this year she was included from a new position. Those members of Koncern Agram (and those who are not) who initiated business in EU countries or established new companies in EU member states at the end of 2021 initiated the establishment of the Agram European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG). Agram EEIG has fourteen members operating in Croatia, Austria, and Italy, and Agram’s companies also operate in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The managerial power of the Group, where Bratanić is the Vice President, is 742 million euros, which is an increase of 13 percent compared to 2020.

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Ivana Bratanić, Agram EGIU

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Significant increase in managerial power

The managerial power of three hundred women employed in leadership positions in 167 companies in Croatia this year amounted to 47.4 billion euros, which is an increase of an incredible 50 percent (by 15.8 billion euros) and a record since the inception of Lider’s ranking list. However, there are several reasons for this jump, not all of which are solely due to better business results.

Namely, last year, managerial power was calculated based on revenues from the pandemic year 2020, when the pandemic’s bite affected both the overall economy and the managerial power of women, while this year’s ranking list focused on revenues from the much better year of 2021.

Additionally, this year, unlike last year, we have more consolidated results, for example, in the Enna group, Koncern Agram, and C.I.O.S. Furthermore, this year we have included managers employed in the public sector and state institutions on the ranking list for the first time – whose managerial power, which we had not previously included on the list, is around 400 million euros. Without them, according to previous practices, managerial power would be lower by about 200 million euros. When we sum all this up, we arrive at a difference of approximately six billion euros, so the estimate of the actual growth of managerial power would actually be around 30 percent, or at the level of 2018, when the managerial power of the three hundred most powerful based on the business results from 2017 was 41.5 billion euros. If we add inflation, with a rough estimate of five percent, which has further ‘pumped’ managerial power, we arrive at a real growth of 25 percent, which is still an excellent result considering that last year the managerial power of women fell by 6.5 percent compared to 2020, when the results from 2019 were summed up.

Follow the details from the conference on our portal, and look for the prestigious ranking of the three hundred most powerful women in Croatian business in the current issue of printed and digital Lider.