In the 1990s, Samir Mane fled the communist regime in Albania and settled in Austria, where he initially made a fortune. Today, he is back in his home country and runs a real estate and retail empire that stretches across the Western Balkans and beyond, Forbes reports.
Among his biggest assets in Tirana is the Tirana East Gate Mall. Its area exceeds 111,000 sq m, and world-famous brands from Adidas and Swarovski to Burger King and KFC have leased retail space in it.
Albania's largest shopping mall is indistinguishable from the spacious complexes in any other European city - and that's the point. “This is our flagship asset. 100% rental“, the entrepreneur does not hide his pride, listing a whole list of tenants. The list includes H&M and ZARA, the first sushi restaurant in Albania, as well as several of the businessman's own projects, including clothing stores, toy stores and a chain of consumer electronics stores. ― People want to touch the product with their hands. We concentrated all the businesses that can be touched in Albania.“
Mane is Albania's first (and so far only) billionaire, and the small country with a population of just 2.8 million people has him as its richest resident. According to Forbes USA, the man has amassed a fortune of about 1.4 billion. USD through investments in retail, real estate and banking, and thus entered the world billionaires ranking in 2025.
Today, Mane's conglomerate Balfin Group (Balkan Finance Investment Group) operates in 10 countries and in 2024 reported a net profit of 120 million USD on a total income of 880 million USD, that is, since 2023 the figures have grown by 31% and 14% respectively. About 62% of the revenue comes from retail, 20% from real estate, 9% from banking services, and the rest from logistics and asset management. Everything is owned by Mane, but he uses partners in his shopping malls, chains and development projects.
The billionaire's influence is visible throughout the Albanian capital, Tirana. He has lived here since returning to his homeland in 2005. The businessman owns Tirana Bank, the country's fifth-largest bank, the largest electronics chain Neptun, and until recently owned the country's largest supermarket chain until he sold it for $48 million in March.
Among his assets is the luxury residential complex Rolling Hills, which the businessman built himself. There he owns a villa with an area of over 3,000 square meters. "I bought the plot in 2008, it was very cheap then," the man says, looking around the 153 neoclassical villas overlooking the Skenderbeg mountain range. Land prices in the area have increased more than 10 times since then, and Mane has been busy developing the area all this time.
Nearby is another Balfin Group property called Collina Verde, and the businessman is building another complex on the shores of an artificial lake. The new project is expected to cost $240 million. USD and is scheduled to be operational in 2028.
Mane owns retail properties in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia, including East Gate in Skopje, the largest shopping mall in North Macedonia. In addition to the Western Balkans, the billionaire has invested in residential and office complexes in Austria and Canada, as well as in the states of New York and New Jersey.
Explaining his approach to work, Mane cited lessons he learned from reading books by American business gurus such as former General Electric CEO Jack Welch: “Welch said you need to diversify. Albania is small, so we thought, why not expand into other countries and other industries?“
The future entrepreneur was born in 1967 in Korça in southern Albania. At that time, the country was already ruled by communist dictator Enver Hoxha. Movement in the country was tightly controlled, and the young Mane rarely left his hometown until he enrolled at the University of Tirana at the age of 18, where he studied geology.
“I didn't choose geology. “The Communist Party decided what to study,“ the man recalls. To earn extra money during his student years, Mane bought meat, cooked meatballs, and sold them to students until six months later, when the authorities came to visit him. In 1991, as a student, the young man decided to flee the country in search of a better life. He obtained a visa for Austria from a travel agency and traveled 36 hours nonstop by bus to Vienna, where he later registered as a refugee.
Samir lived in the refugee camp for over six months and studied German on his own. After reaching a decent level, he applied to study at the Vienna University of Technology to complete a course in geology. In 1992, the communist regime in Albania fell. “Albania opened up a bit and people started coming to Vienna to buy electronics. I saw this as a business opportunity“, the man notes.
In 1993, he decided to leave university, became a translator for some exporters and then went into business himself. That same year, the young man founded his own company “Alba-Trade“, which buys video recorders, radios, televisions and household appliances from Austria and delivers them to Albania.
In 1996, he opened the first “Neptune“ store in Tirana, selling televisions and household appliances. Two years later, the business expanded to North Macedonia, and later to Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro. When new countries emerged in the early 1990s after the breakup of Yugoslavia, one of the first foreign players in these markets was an Albanian holding company.
“He is a visionary who came up with the right concept at the right time. It identified the demand for home appliances in the Western Balkans when we didn't have washing machines,“ says Edlira Muka, CEO of Balfin Group.
Mane's success also reflects the strong economic growth in these countries as they transitioned to capitalism. "It is the largest conglomerate in Albania, and it is a sign of the economic growth and changes that have taken place in the country," added Martin Mata, co-executive director of the Albanian-American Entrepreneurship Fund, a non-profit investment fund founded in 1995 to help Albania transition to a market economy.
By the early 2000s, Mane had built an empire in the Western Balkans with 19 stores and annual revenues of $50 million, with most of the goods purchased in Asia. But seeing the success of Western brands and shopping malls in post-communist Eastern European countries, the businessman decided that the same could be done in Albania. In 2005 he moved his family from Vienna to Tirana and opened the country's first shopping mall on the outskirts of the capital.
A grocery store was needed to be the core of the new facility. So Mane traveled all over Europe, meeting with supermarket chain executives to convince them to open stores in Albania. “Most of them answered: “Mr. Mane, we see the GDP figures. Nobody cares about that“, the entrepreneur is quoted as saying (at that time the country's GDP was only $8 billion, but today the figure reaches $24 billion). “That's why I decided to open a supermarket chain myself, hired a Frenchman from Carrefour and built the first modern grocery store in Albania.“
The step was quite ambitious. At that time, over 30% of the local economy was in the gray sector, where business was not regulated in any way and the state did not receive any taxes. The businessman must convince his customers to switch to Western capitalism and pay for their groceries in shopping malls rather than at spontaneous markets.
Over time, Mane managed to convince the Paris-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to invest $15 million in his grocery store in the form of debt and equity. Finally, in October 2005, the Qendra Tregtare Univers shopping mall opened in Tirana, housing the Neptun electronics store and the first outlet of the Euromax supermarket chain. On opening day, the roads were jammed, and Mane himself directed the flow of cars from a small parking lot. “For all the skeptics, we had a line of thousands of people on the highway,” says Balfin Group CFO Steven Grunerud, a Canadian whom Mane hired in 2007. directly from Raiffeisen to professionalize the business.
With his decision to open a much larger shopping mall - Tirana East Gate Mall - the entrepreneur proved the viability of his concept and secured the support of an even wider range of investors than before. “He didn't pretend to know how to run a mall, he just brought in experts, followed a model and listened to knowledgeable people“, says Mata of the Albanian-American Entrepreneurship Foundation. The manager believes that by selling his stake in the mall back to Mane in March, the fund tripled its initial investment.
Playing an ever-increasing role in the Albanian economy, the businessman continued to increase his success. Many of his investments have been successful: in 2019-2020, he bought Tirana Bank from the struggling Greek credit institution Piraeus Bank for 64 million USD. Today, the latter manages assets worth 1.7 billion USD and has a capitalization of about 155 million USD. However, other projects have not been so successful. Thus, in 2022, Mane acquired the capital's financial news television network SCAN TV, but sold it a year later, losing 2.2 million USD.
In the harsh realities of the Albanian economy, Mane is proud that he did not enter the political scene, nor did he profit from the privatization of state-owned enterprises that took place in the 1990s. “I have never been involved in politics and I have no such goal at all”, the businessman assures. "I haven't been involved in any privatization. In former communist countries, if you're rich, they consider you an oligarch. But I made my fortune in Austria and came back here.“
Mane now intends to expand his reach in Eastern Europe. He plans to open toy stores of the Greek chain Jumbo in Moldova on a franchise model, and is also expanding his empire with other brands: for example, an agreement has been signed with the Danish chain of souvenir shops Flying Tiger Copenhagen to open 50 stores over the next four years.
However, the entrepreneur sees great prospects in his homeland. A potential key to the success of the Albanian economy is international tourism. The billionaire owns the luxury real estate complex Green Coast on the Adriatic coast. The project is planned to include hotels of world-famous brands such as Accor, Gran Meliá, Hyatt and 2,600 villas and apartments. The first phase of the project for 900 million USD began construction in 2022, and Mane has already earned nearly $150 million from the sales of the plots.
“This is a wonderful project, everything is going to be very, very good for us here“, the billionaire has no doubt. But he is far from the only one who has set his sights on Albania's pristine Mediterranean beaches, which are second in number of tourists after neighboring Croatia. To the north of Mane's site, Dubai real estate magnate Mohammed Alabar is building a $2.5 billion luxury resort and marina for superyachts, while to the south, Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his venture capital firm Affinity Partners are building a $1.5 billion luxury complex on Sazan Island.
According to Mane, the more investment there is in his country, the better. “I like the projects, I hope they come to fruition. This will bring huge benefits to Albania“, the billionaire believes. The more foreign visitors there are, the more visitors there will be to his retail stores and the more potential buyers there will be for his villas. “Retail, real estate and tourism.“ “Our future is with them“, Mane is confident.
Detailed statistics on average property prices in Bulgaria by city and neighborhood can be seen HERE