Hillar Teder

Hillar Teder (born September 10, 1962) is an Estonian businessman and property developer conducting his business in Estonia, Latvia, Russia and Ukraine. Hillar Teder is a majority shareholder in Arricano Real Estate Plc.

In 2011 and 2012 Hillar topped the Wealthiest People in Estonia ranking composed by the business magazine Äripäev (Business Daily), in the years 2013-2015 appeared in the top 5 positions of the list.^[1][2]

Early life

Hillar Teder was born on 10 September 1962 to a family of teachers. In 1980 he graduated from the Tallinn School of Science (Tallinna Reaalkool), in 1986 – from the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute having majored in mechanical engineering.

His entrepreneurial career started in the early 1990s, when together with the LADA automotive centre he established Mega Avto, a company specialising in car sales in Russia. The commercial interests of the company also extended to sales of Audi^[3] and Peugeot^[4] cars in Estonia and Honda in Latvia.^[5] In 1994 Hillar privatised the LADA auto centre in Tallinn.

In 1995, in conjunction with his partners Dmitriy Korzhev and Dmitriy Troitskiy in St Petersburg, Hillar established Multon, a juice manufacturing company.^[6] The launch of trademarks Dobriy, RICH, Moya Semiya quickly converted the company into an industry leader and caught the eye of The Coca-Cola Company, which bought Multon for $501 mln in 2005.^[7]

The next stage in Hillar’s entrepreneurial history was commercial property development.^[8] 1997 saw the commencement of construction of Rocca al Mare, Tallinn’s largest shopping and entertainment centre of 35 000 sq.m.,^[9] financed by the international SEB Bank. Rocca al Mare was opened in 1998^[10] and its office building quickly became known as the “Audi Tower”.^[11][12]

In 2001 Hillar set up one of the first Technoparks in Estonia, which he sold in 2005.^[13]

Hillar Teder is a co-founder and owner of one the largest food retailers in Russia, O’Key supermarket chain. The O’Key group was founded and registered in St Petersburg in 2001. Having opened its first hypermarket in 2002, by 2015 the total number of O’Key supermarkets in Russia reached 111 with the chain being present in 27 large cities.^[14]

Hillar is a shareholder of Arricano, a leading commercial property developer who owns and operates a number of shopping centres in Ukraine (Sky Mall, RayON and Prospect in Kiev, Sun Gallery in Kryvyi Rih, City Mall in Zaporizhia and South Gallery in Simferopol).^[15][16] In 2013 Arricano Real Estate became the first post-crisis Ukrainian developer to launch an IPO at the AIM of the London Stock Exchange. The market capitalisation at the moment of IPO approximated USD 24 mln.^[17][18][19]

In 2015 saw the onset of another large scale project, a modern office and shopping complex Porto Franco in Tallinn (GBA 40 000 sq.m.).^[20][21]

Incidents

Accused of bankruptcy of the Ukrainian O’Key chain by retail suppliers (in autumn of 2012 a picketing of the Estonian Embassy in Ukraine was organised by entrepreneurs).^[22] The dispute was settled by reaching an amicable agreement between the creditors’ committee and the O’Key Ukraine retailer.^[23]

In 2014 the scheme of Sky Mall shopping centre ownership became the point of dispute between Hillar Teder and businessman Andrey Adamovsky.^[24] In October 2015 the High Court in London upheld the London Court of International Arbitration confirming Arricano’s right to a stake buyout in Sky Mall project.^[25]

Hillar Teder had been mentioned alongside Vello Kunman (Silikaat Grupp owner), Villu Reylian (former politician and mayor’s counsellor) and Ayvar Tuulberg (Rand&Tuulberg owner) in the context of a corruption scandal and attempted bribery of the Tallinn’s mayor, Edgar Savisaar. The investigation had at its disposal information on multiple bribetakings by Edgar Savisaar in the form of property and fringe benefits in the years 2014-2015. No evidence linking the businessmen to the case was ever discovered.^[26][27][28]

References