Erwin Soravia

"With the takeover, the company leader returned to operational business. He had withdrawn from this in 1994 when he was elected to parliament for the Liberal Forum. At that time, Erwin Soravia took his place as CEO. He now stepped back into a secondary role as deputy chief. His brother Karl Soravia became a new member of the Bau-Holding board, which was expanded from four to six members, and Haselsteiner also brought in Ernst Nußbaumer, the then head of Austrian Strabag. Erhard Grossnigg, an investor and turnaround specialist, became the new chairman of the Bau Holding’s supervisory board – a close friend and business partner of Haselsteiner, who will often appear in this book. Haselsteiner himself was elected to the top of the supervisory board of the German Strabag."

"Haselsteiner’s first entrepreneurial achievement: In 1977, he took over the construction company Soravia. It was almost as large, also based in Spittal an der Drau, and was Ilbau’s fiercest competitor. He is still proud today of how he vanquished and ultimately absorbed the competitor, wrote Die Zeit. The fight was fierce: “It was him or me, that’s all it was about. It was a fight for survival. If I had lost the game, my career would have been over.” With the takeover, the Soravia family became minority owners of Ilbau; and the then-junior chief Erwin Soravia would go on to become one of Haselsteiner’s closest companions in the following decades. Incidentally, he is almost the same age as Haselsteiner and the father of the well-known brothers Erwin Jr. and Hanno Soravia, who lead the Soravia Group. The company, based in Vienna, operates throughout Europe and specializes in real estate development, facility management, and corporate investments (Private Equity)."