A wine connoisseur working in insurance
“I like to have a breakfast in this cafe,” says Enrico Roberto when I asked about his favorite eateries in the city. Absolutely accidentally I asked him if I could interview him at Volkonsky, the one located in the Passage, and evidently hit the bull’s eye.
As we got comfortable on one of the couches on the summer terrace, Enrico talked about his passion for Ukraine. “Here I inhale good air,” he exclaimed accompanying his words with hand motions. “I mean I feel very comfortable here,” he added. Emotional like many Italians, he complimented Ukrainian culture and history. “Kyiv was the most ancient city in the East; when Moscow didn’t exist yet, Kyiv had already existed,” he noted, and added that Ukraine is the closest country to Italy in terms of traditions, economy, the president, and even restaurant service and believes Ukraine and Italy are similar in the sense of mentality.
Enrico Roberto, a president of an insurance brokering company, Milano Brokers, came to Ukraine in 2006, but travels around the region quite a bit. He calls himself “an obligatory traveler,” since he has to make lots business trips to check up on companies he is running in other countries including Italy, Romania and Poland. As he continuously stressed, Milano Brokers brings in the services of a European standard. As he pointed out, the company helps its clients not only to save money but to create appropriate conditions of service.
Spending time and efforts in continuous business trips, Enrico barely has time for traveling around Ukraine. “I lived in Odessa for some time, in other cities I have spent one or two days only,” he recalled. It’s a bit difficult to spend time in smaller cities, where fewer people speak English, he said.
Enrico has worked in Eastern Europe for 15 years and considers it the area where the future lies. “When I came to Romania everybody asked me – “What are you doing here? Are you crazy to invest here?!” Yes, the problems are everywhere in the East but they will be overtaken,” believes Enrico. The only problem that is crucial, according to his experience, is bureaucracy.
He has also shared his hopes concerning the entrance of Ukraine into the European Union, which he called “the only way for the future of every country.”
Insurance is not the beginning of Enrico’s career. “I was a lucky boy,” he recalled with a smile, “I was born into a family that managed the third industry of the champagne wine in Italy starting 150 years ago.” His leaving “the most artistic business,” Enrico explained, was because of family battles to control the wine business. At that time there appeared a good opportunity to enter insurance and he “always liked to be independent from the family.” He got his masters in insurance in Pennsylvania University in the US, and then had gained experience in London, Great Britain, “the mother country of brokering,” and Milan in Italy.
Working in such a “rigid sphere as insurance,” Enrico is still passionate about good wine and told me all about winemaking. “They put alcohol in Ukrainian wine and it’s dangerous for health,” he argued. The winemaking process “should be natural; sometimes it’s better to add sugar, like they do it in France, but in no way alcohol.” At that Enrico shared his thoughts concerning the lowering of prices for wine in Ukraine: “The taxes for importation should be lowered and the market should increase the turnover – the amount of bottles produced, and then the prices will go down.”
Being a native of the Turin area, he prefers to head home every so often. It’s quite understandable, since the city is located in a snug area between the mountains and the sea. To stay in stuffy Kyiv is not that easy for him – according to Enrico in the city there isn’t a club for business people where it is possible to relax, play tennis, swim, have a business lunch, or drink a cup of coffee. “It would be a good possibility for business,” he noted. Another gap that makes things uncomfortable in Kyiv is the lack of a transportation network that connects Ukraine and Romania: these countries are so near but there are no convenient flights, normal trains or buses to link them.
Though, according to Enrico, these are just small problems that will surely change. Ukraine fascinates him greatly. At that he cited me the words of a well-known Italian author Vittorio Alfieri, which he claims to be the guideline through all his life years: “You make your destiny, everything is possible, but you must make an effort,” Enrico uttered and smiled.
