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 Telman Ismailov was born to the family of «shadow
capitalists» in the Soviet Union with his father, the native to the ethnic group
of Mountain Jews Mardan Ismailov. The father worked in the sphere of textile
trade as a responsible person to arranged the underground production based on
market mechanisms. Therefore, it is obvious that Telman has the business acumen
in his blood.
Telman Ismailov was born on October 26, 1956 in Baku, the tenth out
of twelve children in the family. From the early childhood Telman was prepared
to develop the business of his father and since the age of 14 he assisted his
father in every deal. After he finished the school, he started his studies at
the State Economic Institute of Azerbaijan and at the age of 18 Telman proceeded
to his first business activity as the director of one of the stores in Baku.
Soon after Telman was called on duty to serve in the army and in two years he
kept on doing what he started with his father. As for the study, he was shifted
to the Moscow Institute of National Economy named after Plekhanov. After he graduated
from it, he was employed as the inspecting expert at the Ministry of Trade and
in 1982 he moved to Moscow but soon he had to come back to his native town for a
couple of years. He got married and had two sons in the marriage and in 1985 he
moved to Moscow for permanent residence.
That was the time of the system restructuring and
individuals with business acumen and financial eye were given the lucky chances
to risk and open private enterprises on the legal basis, though. And Telman
Ismailov also opened the cooperative store like the most entrepreneurs of that
time. Then in 1989 he registered the brand AST (initials of his two sons (Alik,
Sarhan) and himself). He succeeded in his trade that in the soonest time he had
50 stores opened in Moscow.
Later on, the AST-group penetrated into the Moscow markets
and in the early 90s Ismailov was involved in business in Luzhniki market. He became
one of the founders of the well-known Cherkizovskiy market in 1993. Telman
Ismailov acquired solid funds on the markets to be sufficient to invest assets
into various projects he deemed profitable. So, he founded knitted goods
factory, hosiery and the factory to manufacture leather accessories in Moscow. The
taxi company was founded called «AST-taxi» with one hundred and fifty vehicles
as the start. Also Ismailov invested funds in the publishing industry and he
acquired the «Moscow Printing House».
Anyhow, the pearls of Telman’s business empire are his construction
company and the restaurant «Prague». In the mid of the 90s the legendary
restaurant was put to sale at the auction and Ismailov purchased it
immediately. Later on, he had to invest approximately 30 million dollars for renovation
works of the building. Now Telman Ismailov is not ready to sell the restaurant
for any money though he received somewhat 250 million dollars for it from the
foreign businessmen.
As for the construction section of the «AST-Kapstroy»
company, it appeared to be the investor and constructor of the most elite
office buildings in Moscow, office centers on Krasnaya Presna and Poklonnaya
Gora. The group is involved in reconstruction of «Voentorg» (the universal
store trading in military outfit and accessories), it owns the real estate in
Moscow with the total area of 1,5 million square meters.
On the top of it, Ismailov invested assets in opening the
most expensive in Europe hotel «Mardan Palace» in Antalya (Turkey). It took him
around 1.5 billion USD dollars to construct the hotel. Currently the most expensive
room in the hotel costs 19 thousand dollars per day.
Telman Ismailov does not give up and plans to proceed to the
construction of the other hotel in Turkey and purchase of the football club of
Turkey «Antalyaspor».
All in all, 31 companies constitute the AST-group, among
which are «AST-Gof» (hotel business), «AST-Kapstroy», «AST-Shield» (security
agency), «Ast-Prague», «AST-Taxi», «AST-Gold» (specialized on manufacture of
gold items), LLC «CVUM Trading House» (managing «Voentorg»). The annual
turnover of the company is evaluated as 2 billion dollars and the cost of its
assets is around 3 billions USD. The personal assets of Ismailov total around a
billion USD dollars, by estimation of the experts.
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