Giorgio Marchegiani/From Germany to Serbia, a Career Ruled by Chance
Starting your career with paintings by Andy Warhol hanging on the office wall can only be auspicious. Today Giorgio Marchegiani, 51, who graduated in Economics from Bocconi in 1989, is the CEO of the DDOR insurance group based in Novi Sad, a short trip from Belgrade. This Serbian subsidiary of UnipolSai has about 1,200 employees. He also doubles as president of the Italy-Serbia Chamber of Commerce.
"The offices you're talking about were those of the German subsidiary of Swiss Re, where I landed after a selection interview a month before graduating, during the the days of the fall of the Wall, a time of special historical ferment for Germany." His arrival in Munich was helped by knowledge of the language. Marchegiani recounts with an anecdote how he got started: "I was standing in line with a friend at student admission, and we didn't know which second foreign language required by Bocconi we should choose; so by exclusion we ended up ticking the box saying 'German'". Knowledge of the language of Goethe and Kant was then perfected during his Erasmus in Vienna, although the idea of starting a career abroad had not yet crossed his mind. "In general, these are not things that you can really plan. It helps to have an attitude, a propensity, but it's not like you can sit on a table and decide the stages of your career. It was not like that back then, at least."
Marchegiani remained in Munich until 1992, then returned to Italy for family reasons (his wife got a teaching job at the Milan Polytechnics), and enters the world of consulting. "Formally, I was based in Italy, at first with Bain & Company, and later with Oliver Wyman, but when you work for these companies you are truly immersed in a global system where national boundaries do not exist."
With respect to a quarter of a century ago, having done an experience abroad is much more relevant for a young graduate, almost obligatory. "The important thing today that moving across Europe is much easier is to never conceive your job experience as a one-way trip; job mobility means people willing to move and even to return where the opportunities are," says Marchegiani. And adds: "Italy is an attractive country in certain respects and less so in others; anyway it's not that you have to love the country where you are located, what matters most is the kind of business enterprise in which you are involved."
Two years ago, Marchegiani moved to Serbia, after fillin several important positions in Italy always for UnipolSai. "In some ways, Serbia is a niche country, still outside of the European Union but very close to it in terms of culture and tradition, with a strong presence of foreign and especially Italian companies. The Chamber of Commerce, which I chair, has about 250 companies as members and the foreign business community is quite significant and, above all, very well interconnected."