Cevdet Caner

Cevdet Caner (born July 1973) is an Austrian businessman and real estate entrepreneur. He is the principal shareholder of NIU Invest and the former chief executive of Aggregate Holdings. He resides in Monaco.

Caner founded his first business, Call and Logistik Center (CLC), during his undergraduate studies in the mid-1990s; the company, which provided call center services, food delivery logistics, and a phone directory, held its initial public offering in Austria in 2001. After leaving CLC in 2002, He was CEO of Aggregate Holdings, an Adler shareholder, from mid-2022 until early 2025.

Through NIU Invest, founded in 2022, Caner has investments in the mining and real estate sectors, including mining assets in Chile, Botswana, the United States, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). NIU describes its investment strategy as focusing on critical minerals positioned to rise in demand with the growth of sectors like semiconductors, electric vehicles, and alternative energy.

Early life and education

Caner was born in Austria. He grew up in Linz, where he attended high school and graduated in 1994.

Caner was active in youth politics, and was president of the Socialist Youth Austria (SJÖ) in Linz. He founded his first company, CLC, while studying business administration. He left university without a degree after starting the company.

Career

In 1997, Caner founded Call & Logistik Center GesmbH (CLC) and became its managing director. In 2001, he listed CLC on the Vienna Stock Exchange with a turnover of EUR 34 million. CLC then took over the larger call centre group Camelot. After three years, Caner sold his shares and left the company. By 2004, CLC was bankrupt and ceased operations shortly afterwards. Caner and media have attributed CLC’s bankruptcy to a change in the company’s strategy after his departure.

German and Austrian authorities investigated the matter, with German authorities closing their inquiry by 2012 after finding that there was insufficient evidence of wrongdoing. Austrian prosecutors charged Caner and five other Level One executives shortly after the ECHR decision, with a Vienna court fully acquitting all the defendants in 2020.

German financial regulator BaFin ultimately closed its investigation of Adler in December 2023 without ordering any corrections or imposing fines, although it disagreed with some of Adler’s property valuations. A forensic audit by KPMG also was unable to confirm the allegations in Viceroy’s report. Adler announced in late 2024 that its auditors had found no wrongdoing in their review of the group’s books.