Meglena Plugchieva, Deputy prime minister
Ms Plugchieva was recalled in April from a high-profile post as ambassador to Germany to undertake the daunting task of improving transparency and co-ordinating EU programmes after accusations of corruption by the European Commission. She says a team from OLAF – the Commission’s anti-fraud squad – will spend two weeks in Sofia every month “to make detailed audits and ensure that procedures are being carried out correctly”, so that more than €200m in frozen funds can be unblocked by the end of the year. Ms Plugchieva, a Socialist career politician, is familiar with the way the Commission works, but with a general election due in a year’s time, the toughest part of her job will be to rally cabinet colleagues from other parties behind the Socialists’ administrative reforms. The stakes are high: Bulgaria stands to receive more than €6bn ($9bn) from the EU’s structural and cohesion funds over the next six years.
Sasha Bezuhanova, General manager, Hewlett-Packard Bulgaria
Bulgaria is struggling to overcome a 15-year-long brain drain. Ms Bezuhanova, an electronics engineer who worked in Sofia for an Austrian medical appliances company before joining the US technology group, says she bucked the trend “because I believed it was possible to make a proper career in Bulgaria and persuade other people to do the same”. A turning point came in 1998 when Hewlett won an international tender to supply new Bulgarian passports to meet the EU’s Schengen standards for visa-free travel. Since it was chosen two years ago as one of Hewlett’s six global delivery service centres, the Sofia operation has expanded rapidly. About 1,500 Bulgarian engineers and analysts provide 24-hour infrastructure management assistance for customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “These are high-profile jobs that have put Bulgaria on the IT industry map. We expect to double the number of positions by the end of next year,” Ms Bezuhanova says.
Christo Georgiev, Chief executive, Sistec Holding
A systems expert who specialises in financial products, Mr Georgiev diversified into construction as a way of providing high-quality office space for Sistec’s fast-growing credit card business. The result was the Varna Business Park – the first in the Black Sea port – that has attracted a dozen international companies, including the local subsidiary of Germany’s Eon group, the region’s electricity distributor. Sistec sold the business park to Africa-Israel Investments, controlled by Lev Leviev, the Israeli billionaire, “because we weren’t contractors and we wanted to get back to our core business”, Mr Georgiev says. Sistec pioneered credit card development in Bulgaria, starting with a fuel card for use at a Bulgarian-owned chain of petrol stations. InterCard Finance, its credit card subsidiary, issues cards with the Mastercard logo. Its latest product, a smart card that allows consumers to pay via SMS, is aimed at Bulgaria’s new middle class.
Ivan Todorov, Lawyer and publisher
A former university law lecturer, Mr Todorov quit his post to found Ciela in 1991 as a consulting company and publisher of legal texts. His big break came two years later in the form of a contract with the Bulgarian cabinet to publish a collection of business-relevant legislation. “The revenues from this project gave us a firm financial foundation to build on,” he says. In 1994 Ciela scored another coup by publishing a practical guide to applying value-added tax on the same day that VAT went into effect. Ciela has since developed its own software to support a high-tech publishing business, as well as putting out more than 200 new titles a year. It has also expanded recently into retail bookselling. Turnover reached €12m last year. Mr Todorov is still the company’s biggest shareholder, but has handed over day-to-day management to his younger brother Vesselin so that he can focus on practising law as senior managing partner at Georgiev Todorov, Bulgaria’s biggest law firm.
Ivo Prokopiev, Chairman of CEIBG
Companies of CEIBG – the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria – produce more than two-thirds of the country’s GDP. As chairman, Mr Prokopiev manages a dialogue with the government aimed at improving a business environment that is still plagued by corruption. He is the publisher of Capital Weekly, Bulgaria’s leading business newspaper, which he founded as a 20-year-old student in 1993. Economedia, his publishing group, has more than 20 titles. “Our generation had an exceptional opportunity as the first that wasn’t burdened by the old political regime,” he says. He seized a chance to diversify into finance, real estate and minerals production in the mid-1990s when distressed assets were cheap following the collapse of Bulgaria’s banking sector and closures of state-owned manufacturers. His holding company, Alfa Finance, manages assets valued at more than €1bn in six Balkan countries and is one of the country’s biggest employers with more than 3,500 staff.
Sasho Dontchev, Chief executive, Overgas
A graduate of Moscow’s Oil & Gas University, Sasho Dontchev founded Overgas as a 50-50 joint venture with Gazprom, with the aim of extending the industrial natural gas network to households around the country. “Leading industries were connected but ordinary Bulgarians didn’t have access to natural gas,” he says. Overgas has installed more than 1,700km of low-pressure pipelines through joint ventures with municipal authorities. Pre-tax profits reached around €12m last year. Along the way, the group has diversified into telecoms and energy efficiency: “Bulgarian energy use is over 10 times more inefficient than the EU average so there is plenty of room for improvement.” With electricity tariffs rising sharply, Overgas’s customer base is set to grow by more than 50 per cent this year. Mr Dontchev and his Russian partners plan to float Overgas on a large European stock exchange when market conditions ease.
