Valeri Petrov is Partner at Bancroft Private Equity covering the company’s activities on the Balkans. Before joining Bancroft he was Investment Director with the private equity firm Global Finance, running the company’s activities in Bulgaria. Valeri led and co-led many transactions in different countries across the SEE region.
Prior to moving to the Private Equity industry Valeri was running the biggest paints& coatings company in Bulgaria (backed by private equity funds) as CEO where he did a complete turnaround bringing the company up to high profit levels and increasing its market capitalization almost ten times.
Valeri also worked for the Royal Dutch/Shell, and held various positions within the organisation.
Valeri holds an MSc in Engineering from the Technical University of Sofia. He also attended Management Academy in London and ETP on Business Management in Delaware University, Sofia branch.

Albena Vassileva is a Director with Advent International’s CEE Fund since 2007. She is responsible for Advent’s acquisition of Provimi Pet Food, a leading European private label pet food manufacturer, and Devin, the largest Bulgarian mineral water producer, in both of which she holds a Board position. Albena has actively expanded Advent´s coverage of South-East Europe and also oversees the regional TMT sector effort.

Albena has over twelve years of private equity and corporate finance experience in Western and Eastern Europe. Prior to joining Advent, she was a Vice President at ABN Amro Capital's TMT team, based in Amsterdam, where she was responsible for a wide range of private equity investments in telecoms, media and technology across Europe. Before that, she worked in the Structured Finance department of ABN Amro Bank in Amsterdam and the investment banking team of ING Baring in Sofia. She started her career with the Bulgarian team of EPIC, a regional private equity house.

Albena holds an MBA in International Finance from the Amsterdam Business School and an MSc from the University of National and World Economy in Sofia.

Since 2006, Ivailo Gospodinov is Managing Director in Raiffeisen Investment Bulgaria. Presently, he is occupied with M&A consulting. Ivailo has worked on numerous transactions in Bulgaria as large international companies’advisor. He has respective experience in the energy, telecommunications, heavy industry, mining industry, primary industry, retail, waste management and other sectors.
Before joining Raiffeisen Investment Bulgaria, Ivailo has been working for Forem Consulting as Corporate Finance Director from 2005. There, he was responsible for the M&A counseling, corporate assessments and business plans making.
Previously, he was working as Audit Manager in Ernst & Young and Andersen. In Andersen, Ivailo has been part of various Bulgarian companies’ audits. He has significant experience in the preparation of different financial analyses and due diligences, as well as in the media and telecommunications, energy and heavy industry. Moreover, Ivailo has participated in several privatisation deals when working for international investors.
His promising career started in 1995 in Ernst & Young as Junior Analyst. As part of the Ernst & Young team, he has been involved in the Bulgarian bank sector privatization.
Ivailo has acquired Business Administration Bachelor Degree from Portsmouth University. He has successfully finished ACCA (2005). He completed diverse М&А, company assessments, financial modeling trainings.

Ilko Stoyanov is a local partner of Schoenherr in Sofia, where he specialises in Corporate, M&A and Competition Law. Ilko has graduated in law from the Sofia University and has an LL.M. degree from the Columbia Law School. Ilko regularly acts for clients on multinational acquisitions and corporate restructurings in the telecom, technology, insurance, manufacturing and energy industries. Ilko is speaker on conferences regarding foreign investments and author of publications in the field of the mergers and acquisitions in Bulgaria (The International Comparative Legal Guide to: Mergers & Acquisition (Global Legal Group, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011).








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Mr. Viktor Manev, Founder and Managing Partner of MMC (MM ConsultEOOD), is a Certified Management Consultant and the Chairman of the Ethics Commissions with BAMCO (the national association of management consultants). Mr. Manev started his carrier in the biggest insurance company on the Bulgarian market, DZI (1993) and was responsible for the marketing strategy of the life insurance division (1994) and the formation of the first private pension fund in Bulgaria (1995). Prior to founding MMC Mr. Manev served as a chief financier of the Center for Mass Privatization (CMP) at the Council of Ministers (1996-98) where he was responsible for the entire institutional financing of the privatization of more than 1,000 Bulgarian enterprises. Since 1994 Mr. Manev is actively involved in structuring deal at various corporate finance stages, including M&A, at estimated value of more than Euro 600m as of nowadays, while through his work as a state official were privatized 18% of the state-owned assets. Mr. Manev founded the research and analysis department in MMC that served numerous investigative and competitive intelligence assignments worldwide.
Mr. Manev has BS in Finance (1993) from WVWC, West Virginia and specialization in comparative studies in the University of Oxford (1997). Mr. Manev has international academic publication and is a member of the Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP).

During his PhD studies in Business Administration Klaus worked for several years full-time as a Business Analyst at Creditanstalt, then one of Austria's leading banks. After earning his MBA from SDA Bocconi in Milan, Klaus joined Ernst & Young as a Manager in the Financial Institutions Advisory Group heading several projects in Austria and Europe. Klaus joined Raiffeisen Investment at the beginning of 2002. After an initial role as a Generalist, he joined the Austrian Corporate Finance Team in 2002. In February 2005 he was promoted to head the newly formed Consumer Goods & Life Sciences team.
Klaus has substantial sector knowledge and experience in the area of Pharmaceuticals and Logistics.
Klaus Imhof is responsible for the sectors Consumer Goods and Life Sciences.

Borislav Ivanov was born in 1973 in Varna, Bulgaria. He completed his secondary school education in the specialized mathematics school in Varna. In 1999 Mr. Ivanov graduated from the Free University of Berlin, Germany with a Masters Degree in Business Administration.
While in university Borislav completed several internships in a number of business consulting companies in Germany, Spain and the USA. After joining Deutsche Bank in 2000 he develops his professional career in the structure of the financial institution. In the first four years he held different positions in the M&A and Business Consulting Departments in the headquarters in Frankfurt. Since 2004 Borislav Ivanov has been strongly involved in the business development processes of Deutsche Bank in Central and Eastern Europe and has been responsible for variety of growth projects and activities in the region. In July 2007 Borislav Ivanov became Head of the Official Representative Office of Deutsche Bank AG in Sofia, Bulgaria. In this period Deutsche Bank AG was a key player in some of the largest M&A and financing transactions in the country.

Pavlin Petkov joined Axxess Capital in 2007 and is currently the Managing Director for Bulgaria. He has led the acquisition, restructuring and sale of companies in South East Europe. Axxess Capital manages three private equity funds with assets of more than EUR 250 million. Before joining Axxess Capital Pavlin was Regional Manager at Allianz in Germany where he was responsible for the business in South East Europe. From 2005 he was Portfolio Manager of mutual funds for Allianz in Italy. Immediately after obtaining his MBA degree from Wharton Business School he joined the Investment Banking Division of Lehman Brothers in the UK. Pavlin started his career in PricewaterhouseCoopers in Bulgaria. He holds the professional qualifications ACCA and CFA.

Julian is Associate Director at  Raiffeisen Investment, where he is involved in M&A consulting in Bulgaria and the CEE region. Since joining in 2008 he has worked as adviser on numerous large international M&A transactions – many of those jointly executed with Lazard. He has extensive investment banking experience in the energy, telecommunications, heavy industry, consumer goods, retail, agriculture, IT, RE and other sectors.
Prior to that, as part of KPMG’s Financial Services team, Julian has worked on assurance and corporate finance projects including audit, due diligence, and IPOs in various industries with focus on financial institutions. Before that, Julian also gained working experience at UBS, London - Investment Banking and Fixed Income divisions and at Ernst & Young, Stuttgart - Corporate Finance Dpt. where he was involved in large M&A and squeeze-outs transactions and company valuations. He has internship at Bloomberg, London.
Julian has specialized in banking at London School of Economics. Prior to that, he obtained an MBA degree in Germany and USA, and has a Bachelor in Financial Management & Accounting from The Buckingham University in the UK. He is currently finalizing his PhD in Economics.