View Point

«New York is still the financial capital of the world. Though we are diversifying, we are looking more and more at the new capital export countries like China or Gulf people. For Russia, they might become quite important investors».

«Obviously, the EU is going through a very difficult period, and there is a need for massive reforms, not only fiscally for the EU but also in the European countries which need to synchronize and make their labor laws much more consistent, etc. But I do believe in the future and cooperation of the European Union and former Soviet Union countries. I don't think we have the choice of not cooperating».

«We recognise that organic growth led us to become the second largest bank, but equally we want to focus on becoming the most efficient bank. If you look at our capital adequacy we were running as high as 20% - obviously a very different story to many European banks. Fortunately Russia and the former Soviet Union space is full of very interesting acquisition targets, ROE accretive opportunities. So in that respect as you know we have announced the two major acquisitions, that's TransCreditBank, the captive bank of Russian railways, the largest employer in Russia with 1 million employees, and more recently Bank of Moscow. For this year I think we feel pretty good in that regard, however we still need to demonstrate ability to digest those stories, to integrate them. Over the last 7 years VTB bought 10 banks and, touch wood, so far we integrated them all well and so now the challenge of the other two, then we'll look at it again».