Alexander Dimitrov, CEO of the telecommunications company А1 Bulgaria, was named Manager of the Year for 2018 at an official ceremony held at the Sofia Opera and Ballet.

The competition has been organized by Manager business magazine for the 11^th year running, awarding best management practices in Bulgaria. The event is under the auspices of the Bulgarian head of state, and the award was given by President Rumen Radev himself. The competition takes place in three stages, with 64 top managers from 24 sectors of the economy having been nominated in the first stage this year. In the second stage their number was down to 41, leaving only 10 finalists in the third stage, all of them singled out for their personality traits and on the basis of evaluation by employees and partners.

The ten finalists in the 11^th edition of Manager of the Year are at the head of companies, the revenues of which exceeded 2.5 billion Leva last year. They are in the sphere of telecommunications, insurance and finance, IT, transport and logistics.

“Talking about Bulgarian business I would like to make a distinction – because to my mind there are two different kinds of businesses. One is focused almost entirely on seeking out suitable people among those distributing public funds. The other kind – on efficient management, innovation, competitiveness. The former generates injustice, corruption, stifles quality, tearing us away from the modern world and dragging the whole of society down. The latter pushes Bulgaria’s economy forward, invests in the education and qualification of its staff, gradually but surely modernizing Bulgaria, taking the country towards a position of leadership in Europe. That is the kind of business we should support as a country and as a society,” said President Rumen Radev in his address to the finalists in the 2018 competition.

Manager of the Year 2018 Alexander Dimitrov has been working in telecommunications for 15 years, though he describes his current company as an “infinite universe whose inner workings one must figure out.” Besides the Grand Prix, Alexander Dimitrov also received a prize for socially committed business with the greatest number of innovations during the year.

“It is the most powerful company in our sector at this time, thanks to the team I am head of. It employs 3,800 and we have around 5 million customers,” said Alexander Dimitrov for Radio Bulgaria. “The award is due to the innovations and the reforms we made in the company, and I am glad the jury has noticed them. Our success is also due to the fact that we extended our business, made many technical improvements and added to the TV channels we offer. We introduced a cloud data storage system and that is something our clients appreciate because the financial results this year are more than good. The qualities I appreciate in the people I am building the business with are loyalty, a drive for fulfilment, perseverance. We are one big family, believing in the same values, supporting one another in difficult times. But we also challenge one another so we can move forward. These are the things I look for in the new people coming to the company.”

Ulrich Heppe from Germany, director of the airports in Varna and Bourgas found a place among the top ten managers in Bulgaria. “We are proud of the only two airports we have on the beautiful Black Sea coast,” said Ulrich Heppe, who is the envoy to Bulgaria of a company running 30 airports on 4 continents, and added that he travelled a lot to different countries but that every time he came back to Bulgaria he felt he was home.

English version: Milena Daynova