The manager:  Kiril Petkov
The job:   General Manager
The company:  Bulgarian Development Company OOD
BDC OOD is a young investment company that is working on its first project - the Black Gold Park, on 70 000 sq m of land at the intersection of Hemus Highway and Sofia ring road. The retail plaza will contain shops from leading Bulgarian and foreign companies. The location of the plaza is surrounded by up-and-coming retail and logistic centres.

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Beginning the meeting early on Monday morning, his smile makes the interview a pleasant start to the day, and the week. His name is Kiril Petkov. He lived in Sofia until he was 14 years old, when he moved to Victoria, Canada, following his father who had emigrated four years earlier. This was a good opportunity for him. Petkov graduated from high school and spent the next four years at the University of British Columbia, where he obtained a degree in finance.

He started his career in one of the big Canadian companies, McCan Food. For the first two years he was a currency broker and then an investment manager, focusing on East Europe and Russia for a further two years.

"After this I studied for two years at Harvard Business School, I graduated in May 2007, among the first 10 per cent of the Harvard graduates," he proudly tells me. Returning to Bulgaria from Canada, he started his company BDC OOD, which invests in private capital in the country.

The company and the project
"Our first project is the Black Gold (BG) project," Petkov says. The whole idea for it was born in Harvard. "We created the whole concept there and, on returning here, just transferred the idea. It is not a new concept because worldwide it is a proven working model. However for Bulgaria we see that we will be the first," Petkov says.

But the company does not only invest in real estate, even though BG is sort of a shopping mall. "We invest private capital but we are not restricted to only the real estate sector," Petkov says.

He shares the secret of the first capital that his company attracted to Bulgaria: "After I graduated with an MBA from Harvard I met someone who had previously graduated from Harvard and who is from one of the big families in New York. After I presented the business case to him for investing in Bulgaria, he decided to trust me. Actually now we invest his capital in Bulgaria. He is shareholder in this scheme, but the company is local, as all employees are as well. He is the only shareholder in the current project BG."

Petkov says the company wants BG to be the first Bulgarian power centre, a big plaza at the crossroads of Sofia ring road and Hemus Highway. Inside will be big shops, covering every category: clothing, food, electronics, furniture and more. "All of them will be centred on one common plaza, as the idea is to provide Sofia's residents with one place where they can go and buy literally everything," Petkov says. According to him, during peak hours it takes only 15 minutes from St Alexander Nevski cathedral to reach the location where BG will be built. "In fact, we believe that by building such a shopping centre to the east we will be able to attract clients from the whole Sofia. Another thing is that the nearby cloverleaf intersection itself is the crossroad of two European corridors and we estimated that about 20 million cars travel through this place annually," Petkov says.

Continuing to speak about the BG project, Petkov says BDC is now looking for companies that will exist in the coming 10 years. At the same time, the firm believes that the chance of success for the companies that get involved in the project is very high because they will be able to rely not on only on their own business but also on the business that the whole shopping complex will attract.

BG is not the only proposed shopping centre in the area. Gazit-Globe is planning a similar project, but with much smaller shops, on a neighbouring site.

 "Ours would be a destination different than the other malls, spread over the whole Sofia," Petkov says. "Here, all the shops will be at the same place. The other advantage of ours is that we will have a huge parking lot and all the shops will have their own entrance to it."

The other special thing is that BDC is planning to build the shops according to the clients' specifications. "There is still no plan for the construction, even now we are still speaking to interested clients who want to base their shops there. After we choose the clients from each category we will produce the final plan, together with them. They will tell us their own requirements about their space," Petkov says.

The plan is to finish the concept within six months and for the whole project to be completed within 18 months.

It was interesting to hear how the name for the complex was decided. "The name Black Gold came from the metaphor black gold, standing for something that is precious but it is not gold; a metaphor for oil, for coffee," Petkov says. The land on which the complex will be built is also from the most fruitful, black earth (chernozem). "Because traditionally this land was precious as chernozem and now it will be valuable as a commercial location, we decided to call it Black Gold," Petkov says.

"I also believe it is very strategically located in the Balkans in general. Sofia is a very important point, and BG is at the place connecting these European corridors, which I believe will help attract potential clients: to the north, there is Romania, to the south, it has a direct connection to Greece and Turkey, to the east is the second biggest Bulgarian city Varna and to the west is Serbia. We think that as Bulgaria becomes more and more of a transport corridor, we are based at one of the most key points. Despite all this, we expect most of our clients to be from Sofia," Petkov says.

After the BG project is completed, BDC will also look for investments in operational businesses, in production capacities. "BG is just our first Bulgarian step," Petkov says.

The team
The whole team of BDC is Bulgarian. Currently there are about 12 people, an architect, a lawyer, accountants, a construction supervisor and others, who "complete one another". "The idea is that we are a young team," Petkov says.

Most of his colleagues also have good experience working in their fields abroad. In addition, he looks forward to having a balanced team, able to cope with different situations. There is no strictly defined hierarchy and they use a team-based approach of decision-making and have no reporting-based structure. "I am happy that the work in a smaller team makes this absolutely possible," Petkov says. It is very important for him that the people he hires are experts in their field, but also that they have strong motivation, more than just their salary. "We also need people who can be very flexible with when they work because we don't have strictly defined working hours, we all work as much as we can, the work has to be completed. We need people who can be devoted to their work but not treat the work as it is a separate part of their life. Indeed, loyalty and general motivation are very important," he says.

"We believe that Bulgarians who come back here from abroad are here for Bulgaria's development. This is one of the things which motivated me, personally, to come back. I had the choice after Harvard of working for the United Nations in New York, but I chose to come back in Bulgaria, partly because I think that the moment is very good for the country and its development, and partly because this is my homeland," Petkov says.

When speaking about the shareholder in BG, Petkov reveals he is a person with many years of experience in developing retail plazas. He has developed retail plazas and other real estate projects and a big part of BDC's strategy is based on his personal experience. "This gives us the opportunity to take advantage of his many years of international practice," Petkov says.

I asked what the name of the company stands for. Petkov reveals BDC is an abbreviation of Bulgarian Development Company. "The sign is very nice. It is similar to those of Harvard. There is also a shield, but we put the Bulgarian lion on it instead of the symbol of the truth that is on the Harvard's shield," he explains. The other symbol, that of the BG project contains, as a concept, the two letters BG in the form of the cloverleaf, similar to the nearby road intersection.

Speaking with love about his work, Petkov says his favourite moment in the job is the creativity and the communication with the people. "Creativity, because we have an empty location and we have to figure out how exactly to fill it up, which is real creativity and is also a strong motivation," he says. His work is also connected to communication with people. "First we interacted with the people from whom we bought the land. Then came architects, lawyers. The many different types of communication with people are very interesting and not boring in any case. Many different people are part of realising the project, which is a strong motivation, as well as that the team itself is so enthusiastic about the project, every day is an adventure," Petkov says.

Competition?
According to Petkov, BG doesn't have a real competitor in Bulgaria yet because it is slightly different from the shopping malls that have been build in the country lately.

"Yet the competition with the malls in Sofia is going to be bigger but at the same time they are inside the city, their shops are smaller and they have a different concept," Petkov says. He also thinks the districts of Poduyane, Kremikovtsi and Vrazhdebna are not yet serviced at all by such shopping malls and BG will fill up that gap, providing shopping opportunities to the 200 000 people who live there.

As for the company's competitors, according to Petkov they will be different for every future project. "The flexible structure that we have will make us able to adapt easily and, because we don't have lines of reporting, we are very fast at decision-making. Our idea is always to start from the end client and work backwards, not to build something and then look for clients for it," he says. In this way the company provides custom solutions to the client, and on the other hand it decreases the risks associated with the client's success, as well as the companies success.

Harvard alumni
"I am not the only one from Harvard who has returned to Bulgaria," Petkov says. "There were eight Bulgarians and four of us have already moved back. Most probably a fifth one will also come back soon," he continues. They have made something like their own alumni circle and meet regularly once a week. "I am very happy that people with such a big choice of opportunities decided to come back to Bulgaria and contribute to the country's development. Even though some of us work in competing companies, we still share parts of our experience and even propose different market offers to one another," he says.

Not wanting to waste even a minute since returning to Bulgaria in May 2007, Petkov is also trying to organise an affiliated department between Harvard and a Bulgarian university. Michael Porter, "who is the guru of strategies and maybe the best professor in Harvard," personally decided to take two Bulgarian lecturers to Harvard, to train them so that on their return they can start to offer Bulgarian students a department which will provide them with an education fully based on that at Harvard. "I think this can become something much bigger and we will have the only university on the Balkans that will be Harvard partner, while the program will be lead by the best professor," Petkov says. He has no ambition to give lectures in the future but his wife was working at Harvard as research associate of one of the leading professors in strategy. She would help realise this vision for the new economical institute in Bulgaria. "We have still not decided which Bulgarian university we will work with," Petkov says.

Family and fun
And just when I thought he had absolutely no time for personal life, 27 year-old Petkov reveals he is married to a Canadian and they have two girls, the oldest seven years old and the youngest born only a few months ago, in June. "A successful businessman has to have a balanced life and cannot be only devoted to one thing," Petkov says. He tries to spend time with his family every day, it is a priority for him.

"I also like sports because the physical condition is also very important. With few other people from the office we go early in the morning to Vitosha, climbing the forest paths, fast, for one hour, or running in the park. At 8.30am we are ready to start working. So far I am satisfied and can balance between work, family and sports," he says.
His favourite sport is kite surfing in the summer, and skiing and snowboarding in the winter. "Mostly I like sports connected to the nature." With his family, he visits exhibitions, concerts and the theatre, or he meets friends from his childhood in Bulgaria in his free time. 

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Market tendencies

According to Petkov, Sofia keeps on growing because the efficiencies of a big city start developing. He is very optimistic about Bulgaria. The country's development will be connected to increasing of the productivity because of the foreign investments coming into Bulgaria. The purchasing power of the population will grow.

Strategically, Bulgaria will become a transport corridor and especially on the main route, the traffic will grow and will become a source of income for Bulgaria and for the businesses, based near the highways. According to Petkov, it is important Bulgaria increases its productivity to be able to increase its purchasing power, but already being a member of the European Union, "I believe it will be a location where more and more European and foreign investors will come". This will lead to higher incomes, which will lead to the higher profit for such types of projects.

Truly loving his homeland, Petkov tells a story from his students' years: "In Harvard, in my class we had people from 60 different counties. Once, everyone had to present his own country. The Swiss said they had the most beautiful mountains, the Caribbean said they had the best beaches; the French had the biggest castles and cultural centres. Then my turn came and I said we did not have the most beautiful mountains, the best beaches or biggest castles but we have something from each of these things, gathered at the small location of the country." This is Bulgaria's strength; the quality of life, in comparison to many countries throughout the world, is good, according to Petkov. "We just need to develop it further and the incomes of the average Bulgarian to increase," he says.