Solow Building Company chairman Stefan Soloviev, CEO Michael J. Hershman and vice chairman Hayden Soloviev (Solow Residential, Fairfax, LinkedIn)
Stefan Soloviev spent years running a cattle and wheat agricultural business out of New Mexico before stepping into a greater role at his father’s Solow Building Company. In recent years the East Hampton resident has been buying up farms and vineyards on the North Fork.
Now, five months after the death of his father, Sheldon Solow, the real estate scion is reorganizing some of his varied ventures into a new holding company, the Soloviev Group.
The entity will encompass realty and development, in addition to hospitality, transportation and railroad, and agriculture and ranching divisions. Soloviev will serve as chairman, his son Hayden Soloviev as vice chairman and Michael J. Hershman as CEO, Solow Building Company announced Monday.
Solow Building Company and Solow Realty and Development, and their current and future real estate assets, will operate under the new Soloviev Group’s real estate division.
“As we continue to diversify our business interests into other arenas, including agriculture, ranching and logistics, the firm is uniquely positioned to experience unprecedented growth and I look forward to leading this transformation,” Soloviev said.
Soloviev’s father Sheldon Solow died in November of 2020. Accumulating a net worth of $4.4 billion, the developer amassed an extensive portfolio, which includes 9 West 57th Street and 685 First Avenue.
In an industry full of characters with grand ambitions, eclectic interests and unusual life stories, Soloviev stands out. He took his family’s ancestral Russian name, covered his arms with tattoos and had 11 children with his ex-wife, Stacey Soloviev, his partner in the wine business — and four children with two other women, according to the New York Times.
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In 2018, the Times profiled Soloviev and his father, a litigious billionaire developer. “I’m taking over the business. I get that,” Soloviev told the paper. “But right now I work with my father. And I don’t think we’ve ever worked as well together as we are right now.”
Hershman, the new holding group’s chief executive, founded the Fairfax Group in 1983, merged it with Decision Strategies of New York City in 1997 and SPX in 2006, when he re-established it in Fairfax County, Virginia. Last year he joined Solow as COO and left a management team in place to run Fairfax, which remains a separate entity, he said in a phone interview.
According to Fairfax’s website, 61 years ago Hershman was a special agent specializing in counterterrorism for U.S. military intelligence.