Siniša Mali

Education

Siniša Mali graduated from the Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade in 1995, where he also received a Master of Arts degree in 1998. As a Ron Brown scholar, he received a Master of Business Administration degree in finance from Washington University in St. Louis, USA. He also received a Master of Arts degree from the School of Economics, University of Belgrade. In 2013, he defended his PhD dissertation on the topic “Value Creation through Restructuring and Privatization - Experience of Serbia”, at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade.

Business career

Mali worked for Deloitte & Touche in Belgrade between 1995 and 1997, and in its Prague office from 1999 to 2001. During his stay in the United States in 1998, he briefly worked in Credit Suisse First Boston in Mergers & Acquisitions group. In 2001, he was appointed assistant minister for privatization of the Serbian Government. He also worked at the Privatization Agency of the Republic of Serbia as a director of the Tender Privatization Center. In 2004, he established his own consulting company, specializing in mergers, acquisitions and business consolidation.

Mali has served as a chairman of several boards of directors, including Fiat Automobili Srbija, Komercijalna banka and Air Serbia. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and a member of CFA Institute, Serbian Business Angels Network, Fulbright Alumni Association of Serbia and British–Serbian Business Club. He is a licensed portfolio manager at the Belgrade Stock Exchange.

Political career

In 2012, Mali became the advisor for economy to First Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić. Following the ousting of Mayor Dragan Đilas in 2013, Mali was appointed President of the Temporary Council of Belgrade.

Mayor of Belgrade

After the 2014 election in Belgrade, Mali was elected Mayor on the proposal of the winning Serbian Progressive Party. Although he is technically not a party member, he has been a close associate and a personal friend of the party's leader Aleksandar Vučić.

During his first year of the tenure, Mali introduced austerity measures and advocated much tighter budget balancing of the city. In August 2014, he stated that the new measures already cut the annual budget deficit from 20% down to 10%, by introducing spending cuts in public utility companies and the city administration. In October, he presented the 2014 budget revision to the assembly, stressing that it was the first revision ever brought forward because the incomes exceeded expectations. He also warned that 2015 would be a critical year for Belgrade's financing, as the due loans to be returned amount to €83 million, amounting to about one fifth of the city's planned budget. 2015 budget was adopted on 30 December 2014, with planned spending of RSD 80.2 billion (around 660 million euro), of which one fifth is planned for capital investments, and the deficit would be RSD 4.15 bn (approximately 5%).

Ph.D. thesis

In July 2014, liberal-left website "Peščanik" disputed authenticity of Mali's Ph.D. thesis, along with similar analyses of theses of politicians Nebojša Stefanović and Aleksandar Šapić. In September 2014, German publisher De Gruyter announced that the article published in their journal, which qualified Mali for the title, contains uncited paragraphs from a doctoral dissertation of Stifanos Hailemariam, "Corporate Value Creation, Governance and Privatisation: Restructuring and Managing Enterprises in Transition – The Case of Eritrea", University of Groningen (2001). In November 2016 Faculty of Organizational Sciences has formed the Ethics Commission which found that doctoral dissertation is not plagiarism, and that report was accepted by the Teaching - Scientific Council of the Faculty. The Ethics Commission concluded that it can not be challenged on the original scientific contribution of the doctoral dissertation.

On January 20, 2015, Szymon Cyfert, Editor in Chief of the "Organization and Management" journal, retracted Mali's article "Value Creation Through Restructuring - Key Value Drivers and Value Creation Models" from the journal, explaining that some of the passages from the paper are "nearly identical to doctoral thesis by Stifanos Hailemariam". After reviewing the correction submitted by the main co - author, the Editorial Board has published a revised version of the study and replaced the Retraction Notice with a Corrigendum.

Personal life

Mali is divorced and has three children, sons Teodor and Viktor, and daughter Lola. In February of 2017, his ex-wife revealed in an interview for KRIK, her former husband's involvement in the Savamala affair as well as numerous financial scandals and physical and psychological abuse. He is a keen sportsman, and expressed a desire to run the half-marathon race on the 2015 Belgrade Marathon.