Draft:Emil Tedeschi

Emil Tedeschi (Split, April 6, 1967), a Croatian entrepreneur, founder, majority owner and Chief Executive Officer of the Atlantic Grupa. . He was declared Manager of the Year in 2002 by the Croatian Managers’ Association (CROMA), and in 2005 by the business magazine Privredni Vjesnik. In 2006, he was chosen by the expert jury of Kapital Network as the Businessman of the Year.

Life and career
The Tedeschi family is originally from Venice, and his great-grandfather came to the island of Korčula as a merchant. His father, Svetozar Emil (1939 - 2009), graduated law in Split, and later moved to Zagreb where he became the director of the development and investment sector at the Zagreb paper factory (originally Tvornica papira Zagreb). He also worked as a delegate in the company Zagreb-Mainz in Frankfurt, which was co-owned by Privredna Banka Zagreb. At the end of the 80s, he went to Trieste where he opened a company for small border trade with an Italian partner. His mother Đurđica was a judge on Korčula and a judge at the Municipal Court in Zagreb, and today in retirement, she is considered a fashion connoisseur.

Their son Emil started working in his father’s company in Trieste in 1989. He soon moved to Meteor Holding London, a company trading in cellulose and paper. At the age of 22, he became the director of the Milan branch. He independently founded Atlantic Trade in 1991 with six employees he took from the Zagreb branch of Meteor Holding. His company grew from selling Wrigley’s chewing gum and Ferrero chocolates. He expanded the company through acquisitions, the most famous of which are Cedevita and Neva from the large pharmaceutical giant Pliva, and later the Slovenian Droga Kolinska. The transaction was worth 382 million euros, and he bought it with a loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Following this expansion, his business empire now has a total of 5400 employees and a turnover of 900 million euros. He is also the owner of the largest private pharmacy chain, Farmacia.

In 2010, he received the “Večernjakov pečat” award as the businessman of the year in the Southeast Europe region, and the state decoration of the Order of Danica Hrvatska (originally Red Danice hrvatske) with the image of Blaž Lorković for special merits for the economy. From 2005 to 2007, he was the president of the Croatian Employers’ Association (originally Hrvatska udruga poslodavaca) and a member of the Economic and Social Council (originally Gospodarsko socijalno vijeće). He is also a member of the Trilateral Commission. He is the honorary consul of Ireland in the Republic of Croatia. From 2010 to 2015, he was a member of the Council for Economy of the President of the Republic. For his long-term support of the development of the Sarajevo Film Festival, in 2011 he was awarded the honorary “Heart of Sarajevo”

In 2012, he graduated from the Zagreb School of Economics and Management. He and his wife Maja have two children. They live in a villa of almost a thousand square meters on the Upper Town in Zagreb, which is a cultural good. They rest in the summer in a villa on Hvar. He is the owner of the Cedevita basketball club and the president of the Cedevita Olimpija basketball club in Ljubljana.

Reference list

 * Emil Tedeschi - životopis.hr (Croatian)
 * Emil Tedeschi - vecernji.hr (Croatian)
 * Emil Tedeschi - poslovnjak.net (Croatian)

Category:Croatian businesspeople Category:People from Split, Croatia