VTB stages fresh Russian raid on Deutsche Bank

Financial News

Jason Corcoran in Moscow
16 April 2008


Russia's second largest lender, VTB, has poached 10 bankers from Deutsche Bank in Russia in its second raid on the German institution's Moscow operation.

The bank, which is setting up its own investment banking arm in Moscow, London and Singapore, has recruited personnel for management roles and positions in fixed income, equity sales and research. VTB confirmed the hires, while Deutsche confirmed the departures.

Investment banking sources said Deutsche has been "fighting tooth and nail" to retain staff and had been successful in keeping some people who were believed to have been offered jobs by VTB. Bankers in Moscow suggested as many as 40 bankers were leaving.

"What's actually quite impressive is that Deutsche have fought back and have retained people but VTB virtually has a blank cheque book and they couldn't prevent a number going," said a banker.

Andrey Girichev, head of equity trading for Russia/CIS at Deutsche, joins VTB in Moscow as co-leader of its new equity sales operation.

Nikolai Donzov will become chief operating officer and Svetlana Fedorenko financial director.

Vitaly Buzoverya has been appointed as the co-leader of the department of commercial operations for fixed income products. He will be responsible for the activity on the global markets for capital in Russia and the CIS, including trade in currencies, interest rates, derivative tools, bonds and structured financing. Aleksey Ivanov has been hired as his deputy.

Alexey Yakovitsky, previously hired from Deutsche, has been named as head of research. His team includes three of his former colleagues.

Alexandr Pukhaev will head the analysis of the industrial sector of metallurgy and ore extraction. Dmitry Dmitriev will head the financial and fixed income sector.

Elena Sakhnova will head the coverage of the transport sector, machine building, chemical and construction sectors.

Also arriving from Deutsche are Ekaterina Barinova as director of human resources and Alexey Emilyanov as director of IT.

The resignations are the latest to hit Deutsche Bank. Last month it suffered high-profile resignations after deputy head of its Russian business, Yuri Soloviev, left for to state-owned VTB, along with Victor Makshantsev, head of real estate and infrastructure and Alexei Zabotkin, its chief strategist and Yakovitsky, its head of research.

Financial News revealed that Charlie Ryan, chief executive of Deutsche Bank in Russia and a co-founder of UFG, Deutsche Bank's Russian business, could also join the exodus when his contract expires in the autumn. Discussions on renewing his employment with the business are yet to get underway.

Ryan was one of the co-founders of UFG along with former Russian finance minister Boris Fedorov and Ilya Sherbovich, Deutsche's former head of investment banking in Russia, who left last year to found his own Moscow-based advisory and investment boutique.

Deutsche this month hired Alexander Pugovkin from Renaissance Capital as international sale trader and Sergey Suverov as senior equity sales director from Citibank.

A spokeswoman for VTB said it had so far hired 15 bankers from Deutsche.