Born in Skopje in 1970, Gruevski was brought up in a family that was neither privileged nor poor. His father worked in furniture and design and his mother was a nurse. After his parents' divorce, he was raised by his mother. At the age of four, however, she went to work in Libya, like thousands of other Yugoslav citizens, and took him with her. After their return Gruevski completed primary and secondary education in Skopje. Having graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the St. Clement of Ohrid University in Bitola in 1994 (where he dabbled in amateur theatre and boxing) he entered the nascent finance sector, and was the first person to trade on Skopje's stock exchange. During 1995 he worked as director of department in Multigroup owned Balkanbank, and became its exhibitioner till 1998. In 1996 he also acquired qualifications for the international capital market from a London Securities Institute. Gruevski founded the Brokerage Association of Macedonia in 1998 and made the first transaction on the Macedonian Stock Exchange.