Thirty-five years of building.
Six countries.
One exit.

Paul Oberschneider has built and sold businesses across Central and Eastern Europe for thirty-five years, operating through multiple emerging markets and several capital cycles.

He founded Ober-Haus and built it into one of the largest fully integrated real estate development and investment companies in the region — 35 offices across six countries, some 650 people, and separate operating businesses in brokerage, development, mortgage lending and advisory. The group developed and held a portfolio of grocery-anchored shopping centres, residential schemes at scale and commercial estates. He built a group of five-star boutique hotels across Tallinn, Riga and Krakow, including Estonia’s first luxury hotel, and the Tallinn Christmas Market, for which the Estonian state awarded him a medal in 2018 for his contribution to the hospitality sector. He raised capital from institutional investors, private equity and family offices. The businesses were sold, in full, in early 2008 — ahead of the global financial crisis.

After 9/11, when his private equity partners panicked and instructed a wind-down, he bought them out instead with money he did not have. That decision is the reason there was anything to sell.

He got sober in September 1986. Every company he built came afterwards.

Today he is Chairman of Hilltop Capital Partners, a London-based real estate alternative credit manager lending to UK residential development, and works between London and Sotogrande. He takes board seats, advises founders and management teams, and invests selectively alongside operators he knows. 

Paul is an advisor, investor and international speaker. He sits on boards and works with founders and management teams through the decisions, invests alongside operators he knows and trusts and shares his knowledge and experience at conferences and private events on building in markets with no rules, timing an exit and the reality of being a founder.