A municipal accountant set to become one of Estonia's richest women
13.08.2012, 13:24Property projects of one of Estonia’s richest businessmen Hillar Teder have helped Mirje Põld, chief accountant of Pala municipality, to become one of Estonia’s five richest businesswomen, writes Äripäev.
Põld is a co-owner of vacant lucrative properties at the Admiralty Pool in Tallinn Passenger Port and one of the shareholders of Riverside Ltd that is a business partner of Hillar Teder in Ukraine.
Põld became owner of the 6.2-hectare Admiralty Pool property in 2009 when United Capital, a company that used to belong to Teder, auctioned them for a starting price of 225 million kroons.
Põld acquired the properties through DeltaMax Group in which she has a 50-percent holding. DeltaMax belongs to Riverside Ltd that last year made a profit of 24.3 million euros and revenues of 13 million euros.
Riverside that has been selected general contractor for several real estate development projects of Teder more than quadrupled its revenue last year, while profits were up almost 1,300 percent in a year.
One reason for such rapid growth in profit was the fact that the company re-assessed the value of the Admiralty Pool property.
Põld decided not to comment her ownership in the lucrative business and forwarded the questions to company CEO Katrin Horn.
Mirje Põld’s husband Jüri Põld who is construction manager of Riverside was more talkative.
„This information is entirely false. It is either misinterpreted or approached from a totally wrong angle,” said Põld who managed the construction of Pristan shopping centre in Kyiv that belongs to Teder.
Jüri Põld said that las year the Admiralty Pool property was co-owned with Skanska and until the ownership relations were not clarified, accurate valuation of the property was not possible.
„This pushed the equity into the positive territory,” explained Põld adding that the subsidiary is also repaying a loan of about 20 million US dollars.
Commenting 2011 results of Riverside, Andres Aasvik, CEO of Skanska EMV, said that he congratulated the company for such extraordinary performance.
„If this profit is generated from the project in Ukraine, tis is a signal for others who look in this direction,” he added.
Riverside recently acquired Steelf OOO, a Ukraine construction company that just completed the construction of a shopping centre in Kyiv and is about to launch the construction of another shopping centre at a cost of 8 million US dollars.
Another company that the company is involved in is the construction of the Simferopol shopping centre that costs 25 million USD.
Commenting his business in Ukraine, Teder said that Riverside is more or less building one shopping centre in Ukraine for him.
„This is largely because they know how to use Kredex, the Estonian export credit agency. In Ukraine building companies want you to make a prepayment. This requires customers who have money or can finance the construction process,” said Teder.
Teder himself has in teh past received a few hundred million kroons in export guarantees from Kredex.