Dragan Šolak

Dragan Šolak is a Serbian businessman and a media mogul who co-owns dozens of companies in Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece and the Netherlands. In Montenegro, Šolak, through his companies, owns a majority of shares in the daily portal and television “Vijesti” and all stocks in television “Nova M”.

Šolak is the founder and member of the Advisory Board of the United Group. He started his career in 1990 by establishing the production company VANS. Šolak left Serbia in 1992, and VANCE became a distribution company in 1996. In the early 2000s, he founded SBB and United Group seven years later by merging SBB and Telemach from Slovenia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. It came to the attention of the public, however, after United Group founded N1 Television in 2014, one of the few media in the country that is not under the financial or political influence of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. In an interview with the Guardian, Šolak said he was not interested in politics and had become a political figure only because he did not allow the authorities to determine how his television would work.

According to the Serbian Business Registers Agency, Dragan Šolak has about 35% share in many companies operating within the United Group, so he is the co-owner of dozens of companies in Serbia: SBB, Direct media, D express, United cloud, Grand production, Shoppster, Cas Media, United media production, United group RS, Adria news, Mainstream, Media point, Direct media communications, United media digital, Dan Graf, Mainstream public cloud services, City media, Dansav plaza, Holdco Adria, Netlogic, Techhill plaza, United group network infrastructure, Big print, Fortuna e-sports, Fusion communications, Ali invest, Brainz, Panelcatv, Flamactis, Grand slam group, Hiša plus, TV channel Ultra Beograd (in liquidation), N1 television, Nova S television.

The most successful of these companies during 2022 was SBB, with about EUR 252 million in turnover and almost EUR 35 million in profit. Direct media ranked second in terms of profit with EUR 1.9 million.

In 2022, Šolak became the leading investor in Sport Republic, a London-based investment firm in the sports and entertainment industry, and in January 2022 Sport Republic bought the football club from the UK Premier League, Southampton FC, followed by the purchase of Goztepe in Turkey in August 2022.

The British Guardian, which Šolak gave one of the few interviews after buying Southampton, reports that his fortune is estimated at 1.4 billion pounds. Šolak, a passionate golfer, owns a golf course in Slovenia, and the United Group website states that he is engaged in charity work and invests in education, environmental protection, art and culture.