Željko Kerum (born 25 September 1960) is a Croatian entrepreneur and politician who served as Mayor of Split from 2009 to 2013. He also owned the supermarket chain Kerum until it folded in 2012. He won the election in 2009 and became the mayor, but failed to qualify for the second round of the election in 2013. In the 2017 election, Andro Krstulović Opara from the HDZ defeated him in the second round of voting. Early life Kerum was born in the village of Ogorje (part of Muć) in the Dalmatian hinterland. He graduated from the Technical High School in Split in 1978. In 1981 he got his first job in the Split construction company Melioracija, spending a year in Iraq working on military bases. Business career He founded the company Kerum in 1989, opening his first convenience store in 1990. Six years later he opened his first supermarket in the Lora neighbourhood of Split. In 2003 he bought the Diokom industrial facilities (ex-Jugoplastika), and in 2007 he opened the Joker shopping mall, the largest in Dalmatia at the time. Politics In the first round of the 2009 elections for Mayor of Split, Kerum as an independent candidate won 40.21% of the popular vote, while his closest rival Ranko Ostojić (SDP) won 34.72%. On 31 May, he won 58.42% of the vote, making him the incumbent mayor of Split. In September 2009, during a live television interview on the Nedjeljom u 2 talk show that airs on the Croatian state broadcaster HRT 1, in response to host Aleksandar Stanković's question if Serb businessmen are welcome in Croatia, Kerum answered: "If it was up to me I would not let them because Serbs never brought us anything good in the past and they will not do it now. Not only Serbs, but also Montenegrins. And whoever is doing business with them will not make out OK". Asked further by Stanković if he would accept a man of Serb ethnicity as a son-in-law, Kerum answered emphatically: "No, never". On 16 January 2011, the citizens of Split, on the initiative of an informal group of citizens gathered on Facebook, protested at the Prva Voda beach on the Marjan park mountain in Split against a change of city urban planning regulation that allowed construction of restaurants and bars in the beach area. According to plans, on the proposed beach site a company owned by