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».

«We understand that dollar will stay as the major currency for the time being, but what we are trying to develop is definitely to use rouble as a currency for bilateral trade between Russia – the Ukraine, Russia – Belorussia, maybe Russia and some other countries».

«The new Russian government already made a quite clear statement, that one of the key issues will be privatization of the Russian economy. The government is planning to sell shares of about 850 companies, including VTB. VTB is very much on top of the list for privatization, and the government is preapred to sell all the shares of VTB to private investors, including foreign investors, so we started, I personally initiated this process 5 years ago by selling 25% to global investors in New York, in London. And I’ll be happy to continue this process and to sell more shares, of course, subject to market conditions».

«My dream is to create an international banking franchise, particularly focused on emerging markets. If you look at geography of VTB, we are present in 20 countries with particular focus on countries like Russia and CIS, but also China, Vietnam, African countries and so on and so forth. We strongly believe in the new economies, and I think we will be building up this franchise further».

«I think after elections there's now a new programme which are being prepared by the new Russian government, with a large focus on privatisation. So I think it's around 850 companies which plan to be privatised and the government understands very well that to make a success we should substantially improve the economic environment and investment climate».