Three awards for individual achievement will be presented during the 10th annual Kyiv Post Best of Kyiv award ceremony on Jan. 27. The other 21 prizes go to top businesses and one non-profit organization. The individual awards are the Spirit of Kyiv, given to the person who generously helps make Kyiv a better place, the Business Person of the Year award for exceptional success and the 10-Year Award for the most outstanding contributions to life in Ukraine during the past decade.
Winners for the individual awards are chosen by the Kyiv Post, while a combination of online voting and expert tallies decided the 21 business or organization awards. The Business Person of the Year and Spirit of Kyiv nominees were profiled in the Jan. 14 issue of the Kyiv Post.
Here are the nominees for the 10-Year Award.
10-Year Award
Tomas Fiala
Getting to the top of your business is easier than staying there, a feat Czech-born Tomas Fiala has managed to accomplish year after year. He set up Ukraine’s most successful investment bank in Dragon Capital exactly 10 years ago when he was only 26. According to its website, it still accounts for the largest share of turnover on the Ukrainian stock market carrying out approximately a third of reported transactions.
Since 2005, Dragon has completed more than 50 deals, including initial public offerings, private placements and merger and acquisition transactions, raising about $2 billion. Dragon’s asset management arm has approximately $0.6 billion under management.
Over the last decade, financial magazine Euromoney named Dragon Capital the Best Equity House in Ukraine in 2002 and 2004-2008. Thomson Reuters Extel and Institutional Investor surveys have recognized Dragon Capital analysts as a leading Ukrainian equity research team in 2007-2009. The financial publication “emeafinance” named Dragon Capital the Best Broker in Ukraine in 2010.
Dragon Capital was named Ukraine’s Stock Market Leader-2010 and the Best Online Broker-2010 by the Ukrainian Exchange. Dragon Capital ranked first in the C-bonds Awards-2010 categories of “Best Equity Research” and “Best Equity Sales”.
Eric Aigner
Eric Aigner can fairly be credited with transforming the nightclub and bar scene in Kyiv.
Starting out with a simple pizza place, the East German seized on the idea of affordability and customer service. Soon, he had his own pub, which didn’t need any advertising to fill up.
Rather than intimidating his loyal following of patrons, Aigner and his then-partner and then-wife, Viola Kim, set the house example for approachability.
Despite open conflicts with his partners, Aigner went on to launch new and more successful venues, reaching his peak in 2001 when the cult-status 111 opened its doors beneath the Lybid Hotel on Pobedy Square. It was racy rather than glamorous and drenched with the kind of freedom that the city was learning to enjoy.
When asked once during a Kyiv Post interview what the secret of his success was, Aigner, now divorced, said: “I think that it was a mix that consisted of a lot of work, a certain amount of risk and a love of people.”
Some of Aigner’s creations, which at one time numbered 18 venues under Eric’s Family chain of restaurants and clubs, such as Art Club 44, continue to operate under different management – living testaments to the man who started them and set the standards for the restaurant and club scene in Kyiv.
Natalie Jaresko
Midway through the last decade, Chicagoan Natalie Jaresko became one of four founding partners of Horizon Capital, a private equity fund that originates and manages investments in medium-sized companies in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.
Before that, Jaresko was the chief executive officer of the U.S.-government sponsored Western NIS Enterprise Fund. That fund went on to invest $165 million into small- and medium-sized Ukrainian companies “at a time when virtually no other institutions were doing so,” Jaresko said in October.
Then, not long after the 2004 democratic Orange Revolution that overturned that year’s rigged presidential election, Horizon Capital was formed.
The Chicagoan helped raise $132 million from U.S. and European investors and invested the money into 11 companies in the consumer, financial and business-to-business sectors.
“That 2006 vintage fund has been quite impressive to date. Based on it, we raised the $390 million Emerging Europe Growth Fund II, from which we are currently making investments of $15-40 million into mid-capital companies in Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus,” Jaresko said.
She is engaged in the rebuilding of Pokrovska Church (Kyiv Patriarchate) in Chernihiv Oblast’s Baturyn, including the establishment of a community center, support of the local schools, orphanage and hospital, as well as the planning of community activities there.
“I have served and continue to serve on the board of trustees of Pechersk School International, and am engaged alongside my children in a number of charitable efforts that are organized by the school and the children, including support of the Ark (orphanage and day center in Kyiv),” she said.
Richard Creagh
Richard Creagh, the vice president of Ukraine International Airlines, came to Kyiv in 1993 to establish a high-quality airline.
He succeeded, overcoming numerous obstacles.
“There were huge cultural differences in the early 1990s, a lot of stifling bureaucracy and very little optimism. We have achieved a profit in each of the last 10 years,” Creagh, of Ireland, said in January last year.
Apart from his business success, Creagh’s positive attitude, eagerness to form helpful partnerships and support charities are appreciated by many.
David and Daniel Sweere
David Sweere (left photo) added the word “business” to agriculture in Ukraine when he started the Kyiv-Atlantic Group at the dawn of Ukraine’s independence. After relentless toil and bureaucratic headaches, the Sweeres finally turned a profit in 2002. Sweere started operations in Ukraine in 1990, with $1 million, after selling off his agricultural business in Minnesota.
“My father was lured by the amazing farming opportunity that Ukraine offered,” Daniel Sweere (right photo) said, who joined his father’s Ukrainian farming business in 1994.
Roughing it out for so long through the chaotic hyper-inflation in early 1990s, his effort finally paid off.
And the company has been profitable every year since 2002, according to Daniel.
Today, Kyiv-Atlantic farms 10,000 hectares of leased land in Kyiv and Cherkasy oblasts, growing corn, barley, rape, sunflowers and soybean. The father-and-son majority stakeholder tandem also has 4,000 head of beef cattle and has started adding value through food processing: pasta, flour, multi-game feed, producing vegetable and soy oils and getting into the retail side of selling meat products.
The Sweeres have created more than 700 jobs mostly by pumping money into the infrastructure of 10 villages where they farm. Daniel said they often give money to benefit the elderly and to promote education for youth.
“There’s not much left in the villages where we operate, so we’re serious about rural development,” Daniel said.
His company, created with a total investment of nearly $30 million, also has a 40,000-ton grain elevator, a feed mill, an oil refinery and a milk plant. They are currently building two more feed mills worth $10 million.
Jorge Zukoski
Jorge Zukoski is one of Ukraine’s best known expats, often serving as the unofficial face of Western business in the country. In his 12 years as the president of the 650-member American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, the articulate and amiable American has become a familiar face. He moderates investment conferences.
He gives speeches about the concerns of international business. He hobnobs at VIP cocktail parties.
Under the Florida native’s leadership, AmCham has organized numerous charitable events, such as the annual American Independence Day Picnic. Zukoski has also developed and promoted a volunteer program.
It mobilizes the community for such tasks as cleaning beaches, planting trees, supporting animal shelters, delivering food and other necessities to people who are not mobile.
Now, in a country with a generation of capitalist experience, Zukoski and the organization that he personifies are more like an advocacy group for wide-ranging reforms.
“Our core philosophy is that the rule of law, transparency, predictability and equity in application of legislation and regulations to all investors, no matter their nationality of capital, has been a key driver for the change initiatives that the Chamber has undertaken over the years.
These have led to increased investment, protection of the rights of internationally oriented investors and implementation of more business friendly practices,” Zukoski told the Kyiv Post in October.
Michael Bleyzer
The past decade saw Michael Bleyzer’s private equity firm bring more than $1 billion in assets under management and spawn a charity. Born in Kharkiv, he seemed destined for a high-flying Soviet scientific career before he left for America in 1978 as a Jewish emigre.
His career in the United States blossomed, turning him into a successful capitalist.
“Then in 1993, I returned to Ukraine for a visit, and I saw the opportunities that were opening. I realized where I fit in. There were great opportunities, but no one in Ukraine knew how to access capital markets. I knew this very well, so I decided to act as a bridge between capital and opportunities,” he recalled.
In 1995, Bleyzer founded his private equity institution SigmaBleyzer.
While his fund does restructuring work on the company level, the Bleyzer Foundation, his charity, lobbies government for improvement in the business climate.
Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
