How This Life-Long Entrepreneur Became Albania's First Billionaire

Forbes

Samir Mane fled Albania’s communist regime in the early 1990s and resettled in Austria where he made his first fortune. Now back in Albania, he oversees a real estate and retail empire stretching across the western Balkans and beyond.  Mane, the 57-year-old tycoon, is Albania’s first—and only—billionaire, the richest person in this small Mediterranean country of just 2.8 million people. Thanks to his investments in retail, real estate and banking, he’s built a $1.4 billion fortune, per Forbes estimates, earning him a place on Forbes’ 2025 World’s Billionaires list.   Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2025/04/19/how-this-refugee-became-albanias-first-billionaire/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Giacomo Tonini, a staff writer at Forbes, and joining me today to talk about his unique

00:07journey from refugee to Albania's first billionaire is Samir Mane, founder and president of the

00:12Belfin Group. Hello, Samir. Thanks for taking the time today, and how are you?

00:17Hello, and thank you. Good to see you.

00:21Good to see you, too. So first off, I wanted to ask you if you could tell us a little bit

00:24about your upbringing. You know, I know you came of age in a tumultuous time in Albania

00:30in the 1980s, and then decided to leave Albania in 1991. So could you tell us a bit more about

00:37that? Well, I'm born in the south city of Albania. I studied geology in Tirana University for four

00:47and a half years. In 1991, I escaped the country, and I went to Austria. So I started Austria at the

00:56University of Geology. So I started for one year at the University of Vienna. And after that, in 1992,

01:04I started my own business, end of 1992 and beginning of 1993. So that is the short time that I started

01:15at the University of Vienna. But basically, I escaped the feminist country in 1991. And in 1992,

01:24I started my business by selling consumer electronics on a very small scale, like selling a radio

01:31recorder, a video recorder at the time, by sending 10 pieces, 20 pieces, and then slowly, slowly,

01:38more and more in Albania, which at the time was very empty with this kind of

01:43product because television in communist time was almost not allowed, actually. So only one

01:51television 100 family at the time have been in Albania. So that is the reason why the market was

01:58completely empty. And that I use this opportunity to send in Albania, radio recorder, television,

02:04and then slowly, slowly, I started with other countries.

02:07And how was that shift sort of going from Albania at that time to Austria, and sort of, you know,

02:16transitioning to a completely different country, and then starting your business?

02:21Well, the only one funny story at the time when I arrived in Austria is that I didn't, I never eat

02:30banana, I didn't eat banana, I didn't eat banana. When I arrived first in Austria, I got a banana and

02:42because Albania, that time was not even possible, important to get a banana. For sure, it was completely

02:48different from the country that was even not possible to think and not allowed to think.

02:55I think we got in the country where it is very open and democratic and many things. So yes,

03:02I was shocked when I arrived in Austria as a refugee. I got treatment from the

03:11authority of Austria, and then I got their help to get a small apartment together with other refugees.

03:20So that is the story. But yes, it was a completely different world for me.

03:27Yeah. And how did you initially sort of make ends meet and get into the

03:32business of selling those refrigerators and radios to Albania? How did that start?

03:38Well, I knew that demand was there because, as I told you, one in 100 families have a television,

03:45and some Albanian business base came at that time to Austria, because Austria or Vienna at the time

03:51was the center for Eastern Europe for selling consumer electronics, and they're buying. So I

03:56translate for them to some of the suppliers, and then suppliers slowly, slowly give it to me a little

04:02bit more quantity. So if I load for them 100 television, they give me 20, I sold the 20,

04:08then I got more and more and more. But that is the only one business that I did it for many years,

04:13and I'm still doing after 32 years. We have offices everywhere, we sell a lot of hundreds of

04:18millions of products, but that is originally business how we started. And because there was

04:25Albania, then I started North Pasadena, then to Serbia, then Montenegro, so in all the regions,

04:30then by selling consumer electronics. Because I know that in those years you were also sort of

04:35doing some currency trading as well, but the electronics business was the one that really took

04:39off and set the stage for everything. Exactly. And then could you tell me a bit more about

04:43sort of how you then transitioned to setting up Neptune and sort of what was the inspiration for

04:47that, the sort of the chain of electronics stores, sort of how you built up to that?

04:53So basically, in the beginning, we sold the product from the trucks, so we didn't know

04:59what store, we never had a store. And from the trucks, we sold it all the truck in

05:04three hours. And then again, we got another truck coming from Vienna, so that was the story. At that

05:11time, I saw that by living in Austria, I saw that it was possible to sell the product in the proper way

05:17in the shops. So we rented the shop, and so we started with Neptune. In fact, we, how to say,

05:24copied a little bit from the Western standard of the shops, and we created our brand Neptune. And

05:31it's then Neptune is one of the strongest brands of consumer electronics in this part of the world.

05:36And I know when we last spoke, you had mentioned sort of you had also read books on retail by

05:42the Waltons and Walmart and sort of looked at other firms, but you obviously already had an

05:45entrepreneurial spirit. So I guess what sort of the biggest lessons you drew from those and how did you

05:50sort of take your own, you know, entrepreneurial skills and apply it to them?

05:54Yeah, by reading books, it sure helped me a lot, especially when I read the Walmart history.

06:01And during this book, I saw that in many phrases, he say that I never find something,

06:10I just copy on the better way. So exactly the same we did. So we sold a nice shop in Austria,

06:18and then we tried to do it the same way in Albania. So basically, the same product, the same

06:24merchandising, the same everything. So that is the way how we did it. We copied all the better way,

06:30but the market demand was much higher here. So, and the margin at the time was, well,

06:35like I said, 200%, 150%, 200% of the products. So that's why it was very fast growing this kind of

06:46product and this kind of business.

06:49And then I know you moved to Albania, back to Albania in 2002, I believe, right? Full time.

06:54And in fact, I moved to Albania in 2003, but temporary, but fixed time I moved to 2005.

07:03When I decided to open my shopping mall, when I decided to open my shopping mall in Albania,

07:08there was a story actually, that I wanted to open a store. So I thought that, okay,

07:13I cannot do it from Austria. Then I got all my family back. And I said that, okay,

07:17after 14 years living in Austria, beautiful place, nice Vienna, we need to come back to our country,

07:24because I cannot follow the business of shopping mall from Vienna. So I came here,

07:29and I decided to do a small shopping mall. But I forgot that the shopping mall cannot function

07:35without the grocery store, which at the time, very important. So I went to all Europe,

07:43big companies to tell them, please come in Albania and join us in the supermarket chain or grocery store.

07:50Nobody at the time was happy and nobody at the time thinking that,

07:53what's possible that they can come and operate in Albania grocery stores. So I decided to do it myself.

07:59I got a French guy from Carrefour, and he helped me to create a supermarket chain or grocery store,

08:07as I say. And for the first time, Albanian, that the biggest grocery store at the time,

08:14when I opened 2005, was 500 square meters. And I opened a 5000 square meters store,

08:23which is much, much bigger. And for the first time, Albanians saw 20,000 products in their shelves,

08:29so they can see, they can touch the product and see the price. So there was a big revolution at the

08:35time. In fact, nobody was, nobody was optimistic about my initiative, including my father and everybody

08:42in the city banks, the big force, all of them that I went to, to present the business plan and to show

08:50what I'm going to do. Everybody was unhappy. And they say, sorry, Mr. Money, you're going to lose

08:55money. Why do people should come in the highway and buy tomatoes when they have it next door?

09:02But I decided to do it. That was a big risk. At that time, I risked all my money in these initiatives.

09:08I can say 95% of the people that I met say, sorry, you are going to lose all your money.

09:12Why do shopping malls? But I did it. And the reason why I did it is, okay, because in all

09:20other countries, neighbor Albania, shopping malls running very well, we have the same culture,

09:25we have the same consumer habits. So I thought, okay, let's try if I lose all my money, okay,

09:31I go back to Austria, and I work as engineer. But in fact, when on the first day, when I opened my

09:37shopping mall, it was more than 100,000 people waiting to go on the shopping mall. And really,

09:44from the picture of the time was, the highway was completely broke for more than four hours.

09:49So that was a very good success. And then at that time, I decided, okay, that is my business of the

09:56future. And then I start doing malls in Albania, TAG, and I do another mall in the North Macedonia.

10:02So I did the biggest mall in North Macedonia.

10:04And you mentioned before that, obviously, when you're opening QTU, the first mall,

10:09sort of no one wanted to, you know, give you funding or loans. So you finance it all sort of with your

10:16own money from the previous business. After that, it seems like with your success, then you were able to

10:22work more with other partners, right, to finance the other malls, right?

10:26Yes. So after the first mall, I got some credit from the American company at the time. They gave me

10:35a part of the funding. But when I opened all other malls, then all the banks are ready to support.

10:42I mean, European Bank, EPRD, all the banks that support us on

10:49on creating other malls. That's what's really, really a good opportunity.

10:58And then after all the success in retail, when did you start moving into other industries? So

11:02moving into real estate construction and, you know, I know then you got into banking as well.

11:08When did you start sort of to diversify away from retail?

11:11Well, in fact, by reading a lot of books, for sure, they come to the idea, especially by reading

11:18Jack Welch, his beautiful book Winning, say that you need to be diversified on the business and

11:28diversified geographically. So Albania, for us, was small. And then we thought, okay, why not

11:33to go to other countries? And why not to other industries? And then we went also to other industries,

11:40like real estate and retail, sorry, real estate, by doing the villas and apartments. It's a good business.

11:50Especially Albanian tourism is going to be the country. So I still believe that we have a great

11:54potential tourism. And we are developing quite intensively on the tourism industry, like hotels.

12:03Now, first of June, we are opening the hotel. Later, we have a Marriott license as well. So we are building

12:10villas, apartments and affordable housing in Tirana, especially a very big project called

12:14University of 4,800 apartments that we do in Tirana. So, yes, this one was an opportunity.

12:22And that's why we are in this business. But now we are expanding this real estate business in

12:27other countries as well as in other portfolios as well. Obviously, there's now been a lot of

12:33recently investment and interest in Albania from foreign investors. There's Jared Kushner

12:38in southern Albania, and also Mohamed Al-Abbar Abimar. Why do you think there's been so much interest

12:44from foreign investors on the Albanian coast specifically for these sort of large developments?

12:49Geographically, we have this very good. So basically, you can, Tirana, 55 minutes from Rome,

13:0045 minutes, one hour from Istanbul, and one hour, 10 minutes from Vienna, on the whole biggest empire

13:06city. So, yes, the geographic is very good. The labor is still cheap, actually, I mean, on terms of

13:15Serbia and everything. And basically, it's the only one undeveloped tourism in the Mediterranean.

13:25So far, we've developed only 50% of the cost and much more to come. For sure, much more is needed

13:34to be protected, but also much more is going to be developed. Yes, good names or big are like Kushner

13:40and Mohamed Al-Abbar coming to invest in the country. So far, we get excellent advertising from

13:47them. And it's good for the country, actually, if they do the profit. And do you think there'll be

13:55enough demand even with all these projects? Because obviously, you know, it's next to Croatia and Greece

13:59and other countries, like you said, that are already much more developed in tourism. How have sort of the

14:03sales been going so far for your projects? And are you confident that, you know, there will be enough

14:07tourism and demand coming in for all the projects being built, including yours?

14:13On the other side, especially Italy, it's a very good, it's a very possible client of us because

14:22it's very linear first. And second is that many Albanians speak Italian. Many of us speak Albanian,

14:29so it's very convenient for the Italian to come and to live in Albania somewhere, make holidays. So

14:35I'm optimistic that tourism is going to be a cool opportunity at least for 10 years from now.

14:40And then I know that recently you've started sort of expanding beyond the Western Balkans as well,

14:45investing in real estate in the US and Canada and Austria. Why did you decide to sort of move beyond,

14:52you know, the rest of your business, right, is Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia,

14:57Serbia, Kosovo, sort of that region. How did you think about expanding further out, and Montenegro as well?

15:03How did you think about expanding further out as well?

15:07Well, we see, we see opportunities actually, we see that our administration and financial capacity

15:15and for sure we are working in the good territories in quite stable countries actually, but for sure

15:26America, Canada and other countries are much stable than us. So investing some parts of our business

15:34in this part of the world is also good for the diversification and using the opportunity that

15:39that we have. And we are not, we are having good project in the US, we are having a good project in

15:43Canada, we are having an excellent project in Austria, but we choose only the one that we can. So

15:50basically, we are not going on other industries besides real estate in these countries. We stay

15:57only with the real estate and we don't, the other businesses, retail, banking, we stay in the region

16:01and with the real estate we go a little bit more further ourselves, like US and Canada and Austria especially.

16:08And now that Balfin is sort of a large successful conglomerate, is sort of the, the largest revenue

16:19driver, the largest part of the business still retail versus real estate? What's sort of the breakdown now

16:23of the, of the conglomerate as a whole?

16:25In terms of profitability is real estate. In terms of revenues is retail. So this year we reached for the

16:33first time 1 billion euro revenues and mostly is retail. So, and for sure we are negotiating now

16:44because we are the biggest retailer to say you open in the Western Balkan. And now we are getting more

16:50and more brands. So we are just in the need of signing with a Danish brand for seven countries. And we

16:57are discussing with a company also for six countries distribution. So basically now we are not an

17:05Albanian company. We are a Balkan company. And we, if we ask for something for a distribution right,

17:12we don't ask any more Albania or Kosovo or Macedonia. We ask for six countries. And many of the,

17:17we saw that many of the big companies, they are happy with that because they don't, they don't want to have

17:21many partners. They want partners to understand them, who have the financial capacity, who have the

17:27administrative capacity to, to develop their business in this part of the world. So we see

17:32that now a lot of companies coming to us and say, okay, why you don't get for all these countries?

17:38And obviously in the time that you've been running the retail business, you know, the, the economies of

17:42these countries have grown quite a lot, right? From the late nineties, early 2000s to now across the

17:48region. Are you still sort of very optimistic that the economic growth is going to continue

17:52in Albania and these other countries?

17:55Yes, in, well, I'm very optimistic that the economy is going to continue, that all countries

18:00want to be to join European community. Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro are very near to, to join.

18:08When I say very near, hopefully 2021, we finish the negotiation. In 2030, we are a member of

18:13European community. So basically, so far we are enjoying part of the benefit being in this part

18:22of the world, but I'm sure that 2030, we are going to be and feel European. In fact, we are European,

18:30we feel European, we have the same way of living and we have, we live in this part of the world.

18:37So basically it's going to be just, it's a process now that we join European community.

18:41And joining the EU, I imagine it will also make it sort of a more stable business environment,

18:44perhaps as well, in these countries, sort of similar regulations, similar, similar,

18:49um, you know, ways of doing business, I guess, at that point.

18:53Correct. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And some, some of the offices, we have it in a headquarter,

18:59we have it in North Macedonia. And now we are going to create a head office for another business in

19:04Serbia. So basically not necessarily, uh, all of them in Albania, but we distribute the, the,

19:09the, the, uh, head office of the, of these businesses depend on, depend on the countries

19:14that depend on the many other factors. And, and what advice would you give to sort of other,

19:20you know, to, to young entrepreneurs in Albania and the Western Balkans on,

19:23on how to, you know, build their own business?

19:26Well, the opportunities are here. The market is here. They just need to make a feasibility study

19:34that sometimes is not really the case because I am the one who suffer for a feasibility study that

19:42said, don't do it. And I did it. And I, I, I, I, I reached, uh, here where I am. And, uh, but yes,

19:50they should have a little bit more, uh, uh, risk taking appetite and, uh, uh, yes, you do the

19:57opportunity, but the market is giving the, uh, this part of the world have really, uh, brilliant

20:03people in terms of interpretership. So they're very interpreter oriented and they do very well in the

20:08part of the world, U S and Europe. And I'm sure they can do the, the, the, the, the good things in

20:13their own countries as well. I'm one of the examples that from the, from a refugee really came back to the

20:19country back after 14 years working, uh, uh, in, in Kembek and, uh, working and to create prosperity here

20:27and in the, in the Western Balkan.

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