The company behind the selection of the new CEO in AB Vassilopoulos

By George Lampiris

Behind the recruitment of high-ranking executives in large business entities, there are often well-known head hunting companies, which undertake to create lists of proposed executives based on the guidelines and requirements they have received as a guide from each company. Something similar happened in the case of the new CEO of AB Vassilopoulos, Nikos Lavidas, something you first read on Capital.gr. Now the official announcement for the assumption of his duties is now a matter of time.

At the same time, the acceptance that Mr. Lavidas will have both in AB Vassilopoulos and in the Sklavenitis group, from which he comes, having served in a high-ranking position before moving to the then newly formed Upfield Hellas three years ago and after the global acquisition, is interesting. of the oils and margarines sector owned by Elais Unilever from KKR. At the same time, however, as we are informed, reshuffles are taking place with the departure of other executives of the administrative team these days.

Andreas Gavriilidis the person with a decisive role in the evolution of selection

In this case, the compilation of the so-called shortlist, which included other well-known market executives, all Greeks with long experience in the food industry and organized retail, was undertaken by the company Egon Zehnder, headed in our country Andreas Gavriilidis (the one pictured in the photo). Andreas Gavriilidis is the founder of Egon Zehnder’s office in Athens – the multinational company is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland – and has helped consolidate the company’s presence in Turkey and Central Europe. He is currently head of the Athens office and coordinates the Central and Southern Europe region. This company provides services such as board search, management evaluations and leadership consulting.

In direct consultation with the headquarters of the Ahold Delhaize group

As we are informed, the search for a managing director was launched directly from the headquarters of the Netherlands and the Ahold Delhaize group, to which AB Vassilopoulos belongs. Gavriilidis has from time to time participated in other similar processes with the recent selection of a managing director at Attica Bank, where Michalis Andreadis took office last February. The company led by Mr. Gavriilidis had an active and important role in the selection of a new managing director for Hellenic Exchanges SA. where Giannos Kontopoulos took office last January.

Active role in the case of Chipita from the headquarters of Egon Zehnder

It should be noted that Egon Zehnder at the central level, was the one who had undertaken directly through Switzerland the evaluation of Chipita executives before the completion of the acquisition by Mondelez International, in order to have a specific picture of who would continue in the next day of the business and who do not. In fact, its executives from Switzerland visited Greece for this purpose.

Andreas Gavriilidis is everywhere

In the banking sector, Andreas Gavriilidis had played a role both in the corporate transformation of the National Bank, while he had also taken on a role in the staffing of the former Praxia Bank.

In the case of AB Vassilopoulos, among the executives found in the list of candidates were both the former CEO of the industry, Palirroia and former COO EMEA of Royal Friesland Campina, Grigoris Sklikas, and the former general manager of Coca-Cola 3E, Giannis Papachristou . In the end, however, the most suitable was deemed to be Nikos Lavidas, a person with experience both in the supermarket sector as a former general manager at Sklavenitis but also having been CEO of both Kraft Foods Hellas and Upfield until now. Official announcements of the new data are now a matter of a few hours.