The manager: Iliana Schmatelka
The job: General manager
The company: Immorent Bulgaria, leasing company
In brief: Immorent Bulgaria EOOD was established in Sofia at the beginning of 2004 as a full subsidiary of Immorent AG - Vienna. The company provides leasing for real estate and equipment, as well as for machinery construction, the printing and paper industries, food processing, wine production, the tourism industry, etc. Clients of the company are entrepreneurs, small and middle-sized enterprises, large companies, municipalities and institutions.

Iliana Schmatelka is the operational manager of Immorent Bulgaria (IB).

IB was established in January 2004 and is a full subsidiary of Immorent Vienna (IV). IV is one of the oldest and biggest leasing companies in Austria, fully owned by the Erste Bank Group.

“I am in charge of everything connected to business, marketing and trade,” Schmatelka says.

When questioned about her first steps in this business, she starts from the distant beginning 22 years ago, when she was still a student at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia.

“I have worked for 22 years because I took a distance learning course in Bulgaria,” she says. Her first appointment was as translator in Machinoexport. “In fact in Bulgaria I worked for two companies, the second was Festomachinex,” Schmatelka explains.

She settled in Austria in late 1990 because she has an Austrian grandmother and therefore decided to search for her destiny in the Alpine country.

“There I also worked in several enterprises, which mainly were big companies connected to export and different operational activities in Eastern Europe. At that time this was my strength because I could speak Russian and Bulgarian. The experience I had in Eastern Europe and the languages I spoke were my two advantages, thanks to which I immediately found a very good job in Austria,” Schmatelka reveals.

Her first encounter with IV was in 1998, after she gave birth to her daughter Elisabeth. A few years later, she decided to go back to work and searched in newspaper job sections, where she found the leasing company.

When questioned who she learned the business she is doing now from, Schmatelka says: “If you are asking me who taught me to be a boss – no one. According to me there is no education that teaches you to be a boss.”

In her first years at IV she was in charge of cross-border leasing, mostly to Romania and actually at that time she started the IV business in Bucharest. “Unfortunately, Bulgaria was not yet a country where Immorent wanted to have operational activities,” Schmatelka admits.

After two years she left IV and started working for Austrian Control Bank (Oesterreichische Konrollbank), which is the state insurance company that insures exports from Austria and Austrian companies.

“I worked there for three years. In 2002, I received a phone call from Immorent and I was offered a job there again. At that time the work was already connected to opening operational companies in Bulgaria,” she says.

In 2003, she was in charge of cross-border leasing in Bulgaria. “In Immorent, a country is always first dealt with as a place to offer cross-border leasing. During this time, before the company decides whether to open a branch in this country, we gain a feeling about the country’s juridical system and about the clients’ attitudes,” Schmatelka explains.

After only one year of operation in Bulgaria, IV “comparatively fast” decided to open a Bulgarian branch in 2004, “because during this one year the experience with the Bulgarian clients was very good indeed”.

“After I was called again, I became the IB general manager, which was a real greenfield establishment,” Schmatelka says. “There was no time to learn because the company was developing fast. I picked up everything from my bosses up until then. Everything is a question of feeling and communication, as well as good common sense,” she explains.

Speaking about leasing as a form of financing, Schmatelka says that it “is becoming more and more important as a form of financing, not only in Bulgaria but also in Europe”.

“Leasing is much better known in Europe than in Bulgaria, this is visible in the numbers – the amount of financing in Austria, for example, that is done through leasing compared with the amount through loans. I am sure that in Bulgaria it will develop as well, meaning that the role of leasing will get bigger and bigger,” she says.

Concerning her work approach and the relations with colleagues and clients, Schmatelka says that it is constantly changing. “It was different in the beginning when we were three people and it is much more different now there are 30 of us,” she says. According to her, change is a bit of a painful process because every change is connected to firstly realising that something is wrong, for example some mistakes have been made or some processes do not work, and then the wish to change this.

“I definitely like to lead and I feel comfortable in this position. I know I make many mistakes but this makes me more human. I try, when I make mistakes, to realise when I have made them and then to apologise, this is what happened to me,” Schmatelka says.

About her colleagues Schmatelka says: “I think I work with the best people”. The qualities she appreciates most in the people she hires are honesty, responsibility and initiative. “I don’t like to work with people who I constantly have to tell what to do. However, this is sometimes a two-edged sword because ‘thinking’ people are more difficult to manage especially when there are too many. Still it is a very good challenge and that makes all of us advance. I know that in IB I work with this type of people and I highly respect people who can assess themselves correctly. Correct self-estimation, for me, is a sign of being mature and for some a bit of one of the forgotten values in our lives, such as modesty, the wish firstly to show and afterwards to start wanting,” she adds.

“I have many favourite moments in my work because otherwise I wouldn’t be in it,” Schmatelka answers after questioned what she likes most in her job. “I really like to be creative and to develop different ideas. It is a big pleasure when one can see these ideas realised later,” she says.

According to Schmatelka, every new deal is also a new idea. “Very often we have conversations with clients who don’t know about leasing as a product and we do not know their productions and wishes, it is a very big and nice challenge to sit with the person in question and to look at the deal, as it is one idea. This is connected with much creativity. In a few words: I like to create the deals,” she says.

In the past months she has been getting more and more into organising things probably because, as she says, “I am a chaotic person”.

“I found out I have a passion is towards organisation. This probably is also provoked by the need that in order for one big company to function better, it has to have a very strong organisation. It is just like one machine in which every little part is put exactly in the right place to be able to move all the rest.”

Moreover Schmatelka likes to think about how her colleagues can be motivated. “At the same time I know I often fail,” she admits.

“According to me the best motivation for a thinking and acting person is to be given competencies and to be left to work on them on their own. I also found out that there are different people and it is not that easy to use this approach every time. I am happy when they are happy they have achieved something and I think they can feel that. I think that the fact that since we started all employees who started to work here are still here, means that in some way they feel good. This is my biggest delight,” she says.

She realises that the challenges in the market are very big and the fact that her employees still work at IB means that they have found something in the company “that is special”. “And I see and appreciate this,” Schmatelka says.

Talking about IB clients she says that “almost all of our clients are Bulgarian enterprises and I am proud of this fact”. Schmatelka reveals that at the beginning, when they set up the Bulgarian branch, this was difficult to achieve because Immorent’s bank does not have branch in Bulgaria. This meant that it was difficult to appraise the Bulgarian enterprises and the company had to do it alone. “In spite of all this, we succeeded in overcoming it and we work with small, medium, large and extra large clients. For example, our smallest clients are dentists clinics and we provide leasing for their medical equipment,” Schmatelka explains.

“I can give one definition of our clients: they are true to us,” she proudly says. She says IB had many clients who have several deals with them and who have brought them other clients – friends, acquaintances, companies with which they work. “I think this is something very nice,” Schmatelka says.

Questioned on how IB copes with the competition in the leasing field, she says, “from time to time we measure our strengths”. According to her, “for the clients it is very good that they have a choice.”

“We do not cope with the competition because this would mean that there is no competition anymore. No, it exists and we appreciate it. More often, and the feeling is growing, it feels that the market is getting tighter and not only the financing conditions, such as interest percentages, length, etc., but also how the client is treated, flexibility and the time to make the decision are becoming more important. This is very, very good for the Bulgarian client because four years ago the situation was completely different and I am happy that it is like this now.” In her opinion, the fact that someone has money to finance something does not mean anymore that he can do whatever he wants.

According to her, Bulgaria’s EU entry did not influence the increasing development of the leasing business in the country much. “It has to do with the fact that the Bulgarian market already has many banks and many leasing companies and everyone is trying to find their place,” Schmatelka says. In her opinion, the ones who enter the market later have to offer special products and special behaviour to find their place at this market. “This compels the rest to adapt as well, to change the way they work to be able to keep their clients,” she says.

“This process most probably had started long before the EU accession; it is just one normal market economy process,” she adds.

Questioned whether the specifics of the Bulgarian, or any local market, require specific leasing products for the market, Schmatelka says that financial products are the same everywhere. “For example the product on the leasing market that we offer was not known on the Bulgarian market three, four years ago. Even now it is not so developed as it is in the other countries and can still be called ‘a new product’, it needs time to find its place in this market and for clients to become acquainted with it, to trust it and to start using it. This is a process that needs its time. I cannot say that in Bulgaria there are some special products that are not available in other countries,” Schmatelka explains. She further specifies all IV’s products are already available in Bulgaria.

In addition, Schmatelka says, “The development of each and every new product in a company is also connected to hiring new colleagues, who also need to be trained”.

She foresees a big expansion of products and improvement of IB services. “We definitely want to increase our share in real estate leasing in Bulgaria, which in fact is our basic product,” Schmatelka says. “We want to keep developing new projects, to look for new areas for developing projects. In the field of equipment and machinery leasing we definitely intend to pay more attention to the production enterprises and the possibilities of leasing as a form of financing. I feel that so far that leasing as a form of finance of big production facilities is still not so well known,” she explains.

As some of the leasing IB provides is for real state, Schmatelka comments on the development of this sector in Bulgaria. According to her, to build one building somewhere is a very big responsibility and she thinks the architects have one of the biggest responsibilities. “When you build a building somewhere and it is very ugly, you cannot remove it after two or five years, it will stay there for a very long time. This is a responsibility concerning not only us but also future generations,” she says.

The last two purchases of IB are two areas in Sofia center. Schmatelka says the company has not yet decided what kind of buildings will be constructed on the corner of the streets Tsar Samuil and Washington but it will be either a hotel or an office building. The other new purchase is intended to be an office building .

“The best thing about our company is that we constantly make all different types of deals,” Schmatelka says. “One of the last deals that we made, and that made us very happy, was to finance of one building for offices in Sofia centre. It was a lease for a new office building. We bought it almost new, ready built. We bought it from its old owner for our client. We will additionally finance its completion and equipment, and than we will exchange it for the lease,” she explains.

Schmatelka’s working place is in Sofia but her family lives in Vienna. Therefore, she travels once a week from Bulgaria to Austria, and back again. She shares that for her it is difficult to combine the traveling with a personal life. “I am very tired of it and it annoys me. I feel as if I am not good everywhere or I am not good at all. I feel like I don’t do my job neither at the one place nor the other,” she says.
For her the people are sometimes round, or satisfied, and sometimes square. “I feel that lately I am becoming more ‘squarer’,” Schmatelka says.

At the same time, according to her, when a person spends few days a week somewhere else, her or his personal life is not only there where his or her family lives. “You cannot say that three days a week you have personal life, and four – you don’t. According to me, this is even more difficult for a woman. My daughter is 13 and she was nine years old when I started this lifestyle,” she reveals.

Even though she is on the plane twice a week, she likes to spend her holidays travelling as well.

“I like to rest in the close proximity of water – a sea or a lake. One of my hobbies is diving, which unfortunately I almost do not have time for because I don’t like to dive in cold water, so I must travel to more distant destinations to dive,” she says.

One of her other favorite ways to spend her free time, is simply sitting at home and reading because she almost does not watch TV. “Lately I don’t read novels but books connected to professional and personal development. I often come to the office and say: ‘Colleagues, I read again’,” she says with a smile.

“I learned many things only from reading books, even about company management. I am very interested in the leadership topic and I also attended many seminars on this theme,” Schmatelka shares. Also interested in Feng Shui, she likes to arrange the space around her based this philosophy. According to her Feng Shui is also connected to human relationships and sometimes she reads such novels as well. “Last book I read is ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’ byleast the next two years.