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Crises seem to have benefited the BIN Group: after 2008, it became one of the most active investors in real estate and oil in Russia, and its financial business grew more than 10 times. How did she do it?

The sharp rise of the BIN Group was preceded by events that seemed to put an end to the history of the company, which began in 1992. In 2006-2007, criminal cases were opened against its founder, Mikhail Gutseriev, on charges of illegal business and tax evasion. At the same time, the top managers of the RussNeft company he created were charged with pumping oil in excess of the limits established by licenses; earlier, the imprisoned Yukos executives were accused of the same thing.

Mikhail Gutseriev received $3.5 billion from the sale of RussNeft and the gas station network

In July 2007, Gutseriev sold RussNeft to the owner of Basic Element, Oleg Deripaska, and hastily left the country - through Belarus to Azerbaijan, then to London. And already in August he was put on the federal wanted list. In the modern history of Russia there are many cases when, under similar circumstances, businessmen settled abroad forever, and until recently there was not a single one when someone returned.

The story of Russian businessman Mikhail Gutseriev looked over. Moreover, he immediately began to settle in a new place, already on September 26, 2007, registering GCM Global Energy in London, which took over Gutseriev’s new investments. Fortunately, he had money: $2.8 billion from the sale of RussNeft and $800 million from the sale of the Moscow gas station network to LUKOIL. Global Energy spent about $1.5 billion on the purchase of oil companies and fields in Azerbaijan, Canada and other countries alone, also investing in real estate and other assets. The areas of investment repeated the structure of the BIN Group - it seemed that Gutseriev decided to create a copy of it abroad.

At the same time, many BIN assets remained in Russia - in particular, a large number of projects in retail and commercial real estate, which were traditionally handled by Mikhail’s brother, Sait-Salam Gutseriev, Binbank and construction companies, for which his nephew Mikail Shishkhanov was responsible. A source close to Mikhail Gutseriev told RBC that Shishkhanov was extremely discouraged by his uncle’s disgrace and did not understand how to continue running the business, so he was seriously thinking about selling B&N Bank.

"Do not be afraid of anything"

Such a deal was indeed discussed, Shishkhanov confirmed in a conversation with RBC: in the summer of 2007, he began negotiations on the sale of B&N Bank with businessman Vadim Moshkovich. Already in November they shook hands, but then the deal was delayed. For technical reasons, says Shishkhanov.

“Back then, banks were bought mainly by foreigners, and here a Russian businessman from a Russian businessman, it was necessary to submit a lot of documents - a tax return, prove the origin of capital, then supervision did not yet work, as it does now, according to well-established procedures,” he told RBC. “I realized that the deal was being delayed, in May 2008 it already became clear that there would be a crisis, if we delay it a little longer, then everyone would suffer, which means we need to take everything back.” Moshkovich refused to answer RBC’s questions, and a source close to Gutseriev says that the reason for the deal’s reversal was different: Shishkhanov came to London, where his uncle allegedly told him: go, work calmly, don’t be afraid of anything.

Probably, already in 2008, Mikhail Gutseriev was confident in the success of negotiations with the authorities on his return to Russia. “I have enough money to live comfortably abroad. But both the horse and the cow live, they are fed and watered. And we are people. If I think: I took billions and left, but who will remain in Russia?” - he told Vedomosti in 2010. Among the people who helped him “clear his honest name,” Gutseriev named Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, as well as the head of Sberbank German Gref and the chairman of the board of directors of AFK Sistema Vladimir Yevtushenkov. The latter had their own reasons: Sberbank was a major creditor of the BIN companies, and Yevtushenkov hoped to include RussNeft in Sistema’s oil business. All criminal cases against Gutseriev were closed, all tax claims were dropped.

RussNeft experienced a crisis during the absence of its founder, as one of its creditors said. “During the RussNeft story, Gutseriev came and said that he would return all debts regardless of whether there were personal guarantees or not. But he could have not done this, he would have said: “The state is “squashing”, sorry,” as everyone does,” the banker said. “Every penny was returned [to us] before the deadline,” he added.

Gutseriev returned to Russia in 2010 and immediately became the owner of RussNeft again, paying Deripaska $800 million spent on servicing the company’s loans - after the crisis, the owner of Basel had no time for oil. In 2010, Sistema bought a 49% stake in RussNeft for $100 million (but in 2013 it sold it for $1.2 billion to structures acting in the interests of Gutseriev).

With the return of the founder of BIN to the country, the rapid growth of the group began. If earlier it was content with the role of a strong middle peasant, then after London BIN began to grow at such a speed, as if the co-owners of the group decided: the recipe for survival was to become not just big, but huge. The most obvious example is Binbank.

Binbank reform

Before the 2008 crisis, Binbank was, at best, in the Russian top 45 in terms of assets, 6-7 times behind the banks that finished in the top ten. In mid-2008, its assets amounted to 60 billion rubles, and in October 2015, Binbank took 15th place with assets of 701 billion rubles, entering the RBC ranking of the fastest growing banks.

The total assets of the financial businesses of the BIN Group in the fall of 2015 reached 1.2 trillion rubles, of which almost 1 trillion is accounted for by banks led by B&N Bank. In July, in an interview with RBC, Mikhail Gutseriev said that the goal of the BIN Group in the financial sector is to create a bank that will be among the top ten in Russia. The goal has almost been achieved: the assets of Promsvyazbank, which occupies 11th place, amounted to 1.23 trillion rubles in October.

Shishkhanov began to actively reform the bank after the crisis. “In 2009, I saw the losses and realized that the whole model needed to be changed,” he says. The old banking model - collecting household deposits and corporate lending - no longer worked, competition increased, banks became more technologically advanced, and the market narrowed. “We were not satisfied with the profitability of the business, and we began to rush: retail, here, here,” recalls Shishkhanov.

Before the crisis, Binbank served mainly BIN projects. Stanislav Volkov, managing director for bank ratings at the RAEX agency, says that before the 2008-2009 crisis, Binbank actively financed development projects of its shareholders. “After the crisis, the owners of Binbank did a lot of work to diversify their business, significantly expanding the number of industries financed, and launched lending to small businesses and retail,” he says.

Shishkhanov hired the consulting company McKinsey, and for two years he traveled all over the world, studying bank models: “I lived for weeks in Brazil, Turkey, Asia, but I didn’t get to Africa.” Shishkhanov liked the way risk management works at Raiffeisenbank in the Czech Republic, sales at Millennium, the Santander banking structure, and first-level sales points at Capital One Bank. Everything Shishkhanov liked was combined, a model was built, and costs were calculated.

Shishkhanov spent almost the entire 2012 on airplanes, making a total of about 250 flights to different regions: “You can’t sit on the Garden Ring and think that your command will be executed in Ulan-Ude.” During this time, the board of the bank has completely changed: if Shishkhanov carries out a reform, he does it harshly and does not tolerate disapproval from managers. As a result, according to him, in total it was necessary to part with 80% of B&N Bank’s staff. But according to the results of 2011, Binbank received a net profit according to IFRS in the amount of 202 million rubles, in 2012 it increased to 750 million rubles.

BIN's oil business will bring $1.25 billion in EBITDA in 2015, according to the group's forecast

Source: BIN Group, Binbank, RBC estimate

Sanatorium Club

They wanted to develop organically, even if the bank did not become a leader, says RBC’s interlocutor at B&N Bank. “But a couple of years ago, when Nabiullina began to rebuild the banking system, Shishkhanov decided that he had to either be a large bank or not be a bank at all, and began to increase assets by all means in order to become one of the largest private banks.”

Their idea is to create a large, systemically important bank and build their relationship with the regulator in such a way that he sees them as a strong player and is ready to support, says Standard & Poor’s rating agency analyst Ekaterina Marushkevich, leading B&N Bank. State support and good relations with the regulator are now among the most important forces in Russia that help banks stay afloat, she adds. But getting regulatory support is not easy. The story with Moskomprivatbank helped BIN become one of the banks that the Central Bank trusts to rehabilitate other banks.

In March 2014, Ukrainian businessman Igor Kolomoisky exchanged insults with President Vladimir Putin: he called him “inadequate,” receiving the nickname “rogue” from Putin in response. A few days later, the Central Bank introduced a temporary administration in the Moscow subsidiary of Privatbank. The bank's depositors panicked.

The Central Bank offered this bank to everyone for reorganization, but everyone shied away as if from fire, one of the bankers told RBC. Shishkhanov volunteered to solve the problem, he says: “He took a toxic story, fulfilled the Tsar’s request - and the Tsar’s request is worth a lot, then you can ask for a fur coat.”

Moskomprivatbank had one big problem: customer data was stored in the parent bank in Ukraine, and it was impossible to sanitize it without an agreement with the owner. “They turned off the database a couple of times, and 3 million clients were hanging in the air,” explains Shishkhanov. Coming to an agreement with Kolomoisky and not quarreling with the Russian authorities is not an easy task, but Shishkhanov solved it by paying money for the bank and transferring some assets in Ukraine to Kolomoisky. Privatbank representative Oleg Serga told RBC that the deal was a market one: the bank was sold for a price exceeding its capital: it was valued at 6 billion rubles. with a capital of 5.5 billion rubles. Serga, however, claims that he did not disable the Privat database and all his problems are explained only by politics.

The Central Bank allocated 12 billion rubles for the rehabilitation of Moskomprivatbank. as a loan to maintain liquidity. Binbank received assets worth 56 billion rubles. and developed card business. Now this bank operates under the Binbank credit cards brand. But the main advantage of this story was B&N Bank’s entry into the closed “club” of sanatorium banks.

Over the past year, B&N Bank has taken on six banks for reorganization, receiving a total of about 50 billion rubles for this. in the form of loans from the Central Bank and the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA), excluding transferred liabilities for 25 billion rubles. to 330 thousand Probusinessbank depositors along with the necessary assets. These loans are given at 0.5% per annum - large and almost free government money.

“Binbank wants to be the first in everything. He was the first to sanitize a subsidiary of a foreign bank, the first to sanitize five banks at once and was the first to receive the passive-active pair of Probusinessbank [after the license was revoked from Probusinessbank, the Central Bank transferred obligations to depositors and good assets to B&N Bank]. The regulator highly appreciates B&N Bank’s work in rehabilitating distressed assets,” says Marushkevich from S&P. The Central Bank declined to comment.

In a rating report on B&N Bank in May of this year, S&P indicated that the bank may face serious risks when integrating banks taken for resolution. At the same time, the report says, Binbank plans further expansion. But Shishkhanov publicly stated in October 2015 that for now the group would refrain from new reorganizations. But not from new acquisitions.


Mikail Shishkhanov (43 years old) oversees banks, finance and construction companies BIN

Major League

A real leap into the big leagues was made possible by B&N Bank through a transaction that has not yet been formally completed - the purchase of MDM Bank from Sergei Popov with assets of 363 billion rubles.

Negotiations on the MDM went on for almost two years. Popov, his acquaintance says, decided to “get busy with his personal life,” the headache of the bank only bothered him, especially since the regulator, who was busy clearing the market, began asking questions about MDM. Initially, it was assumed that the bank would be bought by its managers, who would pay for it in installments, but the deal was interrupted by Shishkhanov, who put the same amount on the table, but immediately.

An acquaintance of Shishkhanov says that he agreed with Popov: if the assets turn out to be worse than they seem, Popov will pay extra; if better, Shishkhanov will pay extra. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed: the media cited the figure as 17 billion rubles. for 58.33% of MDM shares. Shishkhanov doesn’t name it either, saying only that they paid “normally”: both he and Popov are happy (it was not possible to contact the former owner of MDM).

At the beginning of June this year, the rating agency Moody’s wrote that the bank has many loans that are poorly reserved: out of the required 77 billion rubles. only 39 billion rubles were created. B&N Bank bought MDM in July; by August 1, the bank had created reserves of 2.9 billion rubles. According to Russian reporting, according to IFRS they amounted to 6.3 billion rubles as of August 1. “Such a rate of creation of reserves may again raise the issue of maintaining the bank’s capitalization,” says S&P analyst Anastasia Turdyeva. Shareholders additionally capitalized the bank by a total of 7.5 billion rubles. The first installment is for 3 billion rubles. — Popov himself did in July, providing a subordinated loan.

Binbank was able to buy MDM only thanks to the “personal financial support of Sait-Salam Gutseriev,” notes Shishkhanov (the Bank will spend at least 17 billion rubles on the purchase of MDM). It is likely that his uncle and Mikhail Gutseriev’s brother will take over MDM Bank’s real estate assets, which were part of the deal. In total, these are 150 real estate objects with a total area of ​​700 thousand square meters. m and 700 hectares of land: various collateral for non-repaid loans - residential buildings, office and shopping centers, which were packaged in closed-end real estate mutual funds "Avangard, First Construction", "MDM - Regional Real Estate", "Trade Capital" and "Golden City".

Hotels, office and shopping centers, which are managed by Sait-Salam Gutseriev in the BIN Group, generate large and stable income, second in scale only to the profits of the oil business, which is forecast to bring at least $1.25 billion in EBITDA in 2015 (Group data BIN).

60 billion rubles. — B&N Bank assets in the summer of 2008

701 billion rubles. — B&N Bank assets in the fall of 2015

50 billion rubles. received Binbank for bank reorganization

Source: BIN Group, Binbank, RBC estimate

Almost like oil

Sait-Salam Gutseriev, who refused to meet with RBC, in recent years has developed almost more activity in his sector than his nephew in the banking sector. BIN has become the largest investor in the capital's real estate market, having spent about $5 billion on the purchase of construction companies, warehouses, hotels and other things over the past five years alone, if we sum up expert assessments in the media.

Shishkhanov did not want to name the exact amounts of the transactions, but said that the group paid far from the money that was mentioned in the press. “Front purchases are when you buy a ring for your wife, and in business there is a valuation of the company and the amount of the transaction, the valuation can be 100 million, and the transaction amount is 1 million,” he says. His words are confirmed by market participants and acquaintances. “Over the past five years, they have practically not bought real estate on general market conditions,” says a source surrounded by entrepreneurs.

One of RBC’s interlocutors compared Sait-Salam’s manner of negotiations to the actions of a boa constrictor, which slowly but inevitably squeezes the victim in a vice. “During the negotiations, he almost immediately, without a calculator, calculated the cost of, say, a shopping center, using his own formulas,” he recalls. The conditions offered by Sait-Salam Gutseriev are sometimes worse than those of competitors, RBC’s interlocutor agrees, but he is always ready to pay in money.

Over the past five years, the BIN Group has purchased such diverse assets as the Severnoye Domodedovo warehouse complex and MLP in the Moscow region, the capital's National and Central hotels, and the Inteko construction company from Elena Baturina, the wife of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. The latest deal is reminiscent of the story with Kolomoisky’s bank: a delicate situation in which it was necessary to find a solution that would suit all parties.

The BIN group also helped solve the problem of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who in 2011 decided to lead the Georgian opposition, and therefore renounced Russian citizenship and sold the remains of his business in Russia - a residential complex and hotels in Moscow. And the problem of the Bank of Moscow with the unfinished Radisson hotel of the fugitive bank president Andrei Borodin: only BIN agreed to pay 5 billion rubles for it.

In the summer of 2015, the failed buyer of B&N Bank, Vadim Moshkovich, agreed to sell to the BIN Group his development business - the companies "Augur-Estate" and "A101 Development" with 2.4 thousand hectares of land in New Moscow. The deal should be closed in the fall, after approval from the FAS. Moshkovich had difficulties in coordinating new residential projects, which is why he lost interest in Kommunarka, says a former top manager of Avgur Estate.

BIN is able to negotiate with the authorities much better, and projects on the new land will allow Inteko to load. The next year after its purchase from Baturina, the company’s housing commissioning volumes decreased by 45%, to 231 thousand square meters. m, and the company has still not reached the figures for 2010 - in 2014 it built 274.6 thousand sq. m. m, plan for 2015 - 287.8 thousand sq. m. m. “We have Inteko and there is a company called Patriot, which builds the mass and lower mass segments. The A101 company fits into this very well. The asking price suited us,” says Shishkhanov.

Now the real estate business, according to RBC calculations based on data from Colliers International, Cushman & Wakefield, JLL, CBRE and Knight Frank, is capable of bringing the group up to 37.8 billion rubles. per year, subject to 100% workload. True, Mikhail Gutseriev said in July that retail space was 90% occupied, business centers were 83-85% occupied, and the decline in revenue in this segment in dollars this year will be 25-30%. But there are also other parts of BIN's business related to real estate and related banks that are not always visible.

Land bank

In recent years, BIN has collected not only banks and real estate, but also pension funds. The first was NPF Doverie, which Shishkhanov inherited in 2012 after a “divorce” from the founder of Finam, Viktor Remsha. In 2006, Finam and BIN created the management company BIN Finam Management, which included the Finam Capital Investments fund, which invested in agricultural land.

Remsha suggested taking over the land, says his business partner Alexey Garyunov. Finam had an idea to create a product in which pension savings could be invested. Garyunov hired a team that began purchasing land in the Krasnodar Territory, Rostov, Voronezh and Saratov regions. “We even collected grain from farmers and sold it in large quantities to get high prices,” he says. At the same time, he bought the first pension fund - NPF “Doverie”.

Sait-Salam Gutseriev (56 years old) is involved in retail, warehouse and business centers, as well as hotels of the group.

But the whole story, according to Garyunov, “didn’t fly”: closed-end mutual funds began to be used to hide bad assets, the regulator began to be suspicious of them. In addition, the partners began to conflict over the issue of managing money in the pension fund - in 2012 they decided to get a divorce. Shishkhanov received the NPF “Doverie” and “Finam Capital Investments”, which at that time had 160 thousand hectares of land. Remsha stayed with the IT fund.

Now the fund has 169 thousand hectares of land - this is the 20th largest land bank in Russia. B&N Bank leases them to farmers, lends them, as well as purchases leasing equipment and traders who buy crops from them, says an acquaintance of Shishkhanov. The annual report of this fund states that its assets as of the end of 2014 were estimated at 11 billion rubles.

Shishkhanov at first did not understand why the pension fund was needed, he had to be persuaded, recalls Garyunov. As his friend says, Garyunov bought a pension fund for 6.5% of assets, and sold BIN for about 15%. Since then, the group’s attitude towards pension assets has changed: over three years, BIN has collected five pension funds, which are planned to be merged into one under the name “Safmar”. Their assets reached almost 150 billion rubles.

For five funds, the BIN Group could pay 23.7 billion rubles, if we estimate expenses as 12% of the total assets now plus own funds: this way we can take into account not only what was spent on the purchase, but also what the group invested in their development.

Invisible connections

Why BIN pension funds? For example, the group bought NPF “European” in 2013. From the data published on the Central Bank website it follows that in 2013, 0% of pension savings were invested in mortgage participation certificates - the papers in which real estate and construction projects are packaged - 0% of pension savings, as well as in 2011 and 2012. At the end of 2014 - already 29.51%. The picture is similar in the NPF Regionfond, which BIN bought in 2014: in 2013, about 0.5% of pension savings were invested in mortgage certificates, and at the end of 2014 - 16%.

Construction business, banks, pension money BIN Groups are intertwined with many connections. For example, the residential building “Bernikov” on Nikoloyamskaya Street was built by “Inteko”; the house was mortgaged to B&N Bank for a loan of 2.7 billion rubles. This loan is repackaged into mortgage participation certificates issued by the group's management company EFG; these certificates are in the portfolios of pension funds that are part of the BIN Group. But the profitability, however, is not bad - the loan was issued at 18.7% per annum.

Another example is mortgage participation certificates issued by the Geocapital company (formally not included in the BIN, but related to it) under the number GK-3. The borrower of the loan for 24.6 billion rubles, which is packaged in these papers, is the company Stonebell Trading & Investments, which belongs to Sait-Salam Gutseriev. Petrovsky Passage and the Integral business center on the territory of the Serp and Molot plant were pledged as collateral; the loan was issued by B&N Bank. With this money, the group is building the Radission Blu hotel for the World Cup. And these certificates are also in the portfolios of pension funds.

Such packaging allows the loan to be removed from the bank’s balance sheet: as a result of securitization, the pension fund becomes the lender, which can invest up to 40% of savings in such securities, says Stanislav Volkov, an analyst at the RAEX rating agency. “The bank has standards, pressure on capital, and the pension savings funds are conditionally its own, it just goes into this paper and sits in it without experiencing problems. Loans for any construction and real estate are difficult in terms of reserving,” he says.

RUB 37.8 billion per year can bring real estate to the BIN Group

160 thousand hectares constitute the land bank of BIN Group

Putin's revenge on the RBC media holding has borne fruit today. RBC editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya, RBC website editor-in-chief Roman Badanin and RBC newspaper editor-in-chief Maxim Solyus have left the holding, the company itself announced. The last working day of all three is today, May 13, the message says.

This happened the very next day after the Prokhorov-owned RBC agency reported that the participants of “Direct Line with Vladimir Putin” had been gathered in a boarding house near Moscow two days earlier for instruction and rehearsal.

Even earlier, RBC published publications dedicated to Putin’s family: director of the Innopraktika foundation Katerina Tikhonova, whom Reuters sources called “Putin’s daughter” (the president’s press secretary denied this data), and entrepreneur Kirill Shamalov, who, according to Reuters, is son-in-law head of state. One of the sources said that an extremely negative reaction was also caused by the photograph of Vladimir Putin for an article about Panamanian offshore companies published in the RBC newspaper.

— Firstly, we have a good, stable team. And we take risks seriously. Why do we feel good? Because during the crisis our risks relative to competitors were quite good and low. Because we have a different approach to portfolio formation. And we are still growing, but we are growing qualitatively. The problem with competitors - retail bankers is that banks are run by managers, and these managers are focused on receiving bonuses. This is a fundamental problem of the banking system: there are very few owners who sit and do business. ​Sovcombank is an excellent example where everything works out because the owners take care of it themselves. Well, there are also small examples, maybe the St. Petersburg Bank, where the owner is also passionate about business. But basically everything is left to the managers.

Managers are, frankly speaking, not very conscious creatures. They issue loans, receive bonuses, and everything is fine with them. Then bad times come, and all this, sorry, g, comes up. They are all (banks. - RBC) and began to drown. But we treat things differently, we have a stable team; I remind you that management owns 6% of the bank. They are motivated for the long term. In short, we have properly organized motivation for management - long-term, not short-term, this leads to the fact that we get through crises better.

— If we talk about the retail lending market in general, do you think retail banks have any future?

— The population is now less indebted than in 2013, deleveraging has occurred over the past two years - people have paid off their loans, some have been written off. The lending business is cyclical in nature. We know, looking at Western markets, that the cycle takes eight to ten years. We are at the very beginning of a good cycle, I think there will be nothing (bad) for the next five years. RBC) will not be. All retail banks are starting to actively lend, they are now refinancing, lending, and in five years everything will be the same again. This is a normal business cycle, which we are prepared for and understand very well. Another question is that I would like my colleagues to be responsible when it comes to issuing money, and not to give out large sums to just anyone - for example, we don’t indulge in this. But this is a rhetorical question, again. Shareholders demand - managers deliver. Now they will start handing out money again. Then they will lick their wounds. During this crisis, the Central Bank saved retail monoliners; in the next one, they will completely sink.

— By the way, you recently criticized the Central Bank, saying that it is pursuing too tough a policy. Have you changed your point of view?

“I can’t change my point of view every two weeks.” I believe that the regulator has taken an overly tough position in relation to retail banks. I believe that private business must understand who it lends to and how it lends. If we have proven over the years that we know how to lend to this segment, let us lend to it, why limit us. Moreover, this segment exists, and if we do not lend, it will go to microfinance organizations. And far from those MFOs (microfinance organizations. - RBC) that we know and have heard of. In the regions there are criminal MFOs, which are MFOs only on paper, but in reality they are a nonsense crime. And, by the way, all these scandals that we see and hear - with the so-called collection - do not concern banks at all. 90% of high-profile scandalous cases concerned microfinance organizations. And again, these are not large Moscow microfinance organizations that everyone knows, with assets worth billions of rubles, but these are local semi-criminal organizations. Then we should probably ban microfinance organizations.

— Do you also have microfinance organizations?

— And we have microfinance organizations. We are in the lending business, so we want to be present wherever there is a lending business.

— You predict that next year you will earn 14 billion rubles. What are you betting on?

- Not next year, this year. In the next one we want a lot more. Our non-credit income is growing at a good pace from a low base, although it is not yet comparable to credit income. Our main business is credit cards, we actively sell mortgages and investment products. “Tinkoff Investments,” by the way, is already a profitable product, mortgages are about to become profitable, and small and medium-sized businesses are our star, they are flying, we already have more than 100 thousand clients. We open 20-22 thousand accounts per month. This is a very good commission business, and it is already profitable, and we will earn money there. We believe that there is an opportunity on the basis of Tinkoff.ru to build a large financial, if you like, portal, ecosystem, financial supermarket, where all financial products will be presented - ours, our partners, and we will make good money from it.

Oleg Tinkov (Photo: Ekaterina Kuzmina / RBC)

— Do you see the future of your bank in this?

- Maybe yes. We are moving into different related segments. We want to get involved in wealth management, for example. Against the backdrop of reduced inflation, the refinancing rate and deposit rates are reduced. When interest on deposits was more than 10%, naturally, there could be no talk of any investment or wealth management market. I see that in the medium term the rates will be 4-5%, accordingly, a huge field will open up for the trust management market, the capital management market, and we want to play a significant role in it. We believe that the market is quite empty, with the exception of some brokerage companies, such as our investment partner BCS, Finam, there is essentially no one in this market. We love to come to the market and do things differently. One of our ideas is to take an honest commission, to be quite transparent for the market, for our clients.

— Will this be for people or for millionaires?

- This, by the way, will also be our competitive advantage, we will not have a minimum there, from which we take money for management, as everyone likes - from five million, for example. We now have six million active customers, and we will offer this product to all of them - no matter, there will be no minimum. To answer your question briefly - for everyone. The VIP segment or private banking is also of interest to us, we are looking at it and will probably come to it, but this is the last thing. We are not very interested in this segment.

— Tell us about ATMs. You had a model that everyone admired, huge margins, low costs, and then there were ATMs.

“Now they will admire our model even more.” Our costs are still low, and will probably be even lower. This year we will earn a lot of money - more than 40% return on capital, and ATMs will not play a big role. Even if we deliver several thousand ATMs as part of our business, and we have assets worth 200 billion, this is all pennies. There is no special paradigm here; we always follow the client. Although there is still some kind. Ford said: a car can be any color as long as it's black. We will open a bank office only over my corpse. As long as I'm alive, there won't be an office.

But an ATM is different, it’s a robot, a technology. We follow the client and make his life better and more attractive. We went into the small and medium-sized business segment, and there are a number of collection needs there. Naturally, we will not make simple ATMs, but smart ones, if you like. They will be multi-currency, with self-collection, it will be possible to collect proceeds there, and from there it will be possible to withdraw cash in different currencies. We are seeing more and more negative reviews from people who want to withdraw or deposit large amounts of foreign currency. By installing ATMs in the best places in cities with a population of over a million, we will give people access to withdraw and collect currency. ATMs are not a change of strategy, they are a step towards our consumers.

— What if the consumer demands branches?

“If the consumer demands separation, he will demand it, and that will be the end of it.”

— You started releasing the “World” card. How do you like this project in general, what do you think about it?

— I believe that Russia deserves its own payment system. It should have been done a long time ago. As always, the roast rooster pecked in one place - they did it. Well, by the way, they did it quite well.

— What technologies are now critical for your business?

“Education is critically important to us.” I believe that in Russia the level of education is gradually (gradually, which is encouraging) declining. We are seeing fewer and fewer quality graduates. Plus the demographic hole of the early 1990s. There are few students, few graduates, and our average employee age is 24 years old, we are very, very dependent on new students, on streams. I am very embarrassed by both the quality of education and the number of students graduating. We absolutely do not have enough technologists, developers and simply young smart people who are changing the financial industry and moving it forward. Technology itself is nothing. They can be bought, purchased, but people are very important.

— Don’t you want to do something for this, you have a habit of changing the world around you?

- We do. We just opened our own department in fintech at MIPT, we created our own fintech school at the bank, our top managers and I sometimes teach there. Well, in general, we are working on it.

— You recently admired how German Gref reformed Sberbank. Are you somehow close to his approaches?

— “Admired” is probably a strong term. I praised what he did, but nothing more. Reform such an organization and earn half a trillion! We earn 14 billion in profit, and he earns half a trillion. It's hard not to speak positively about this organization. Despite the fact that there are state banks of comparable size that earn several times less. It seems to me that the result is obvious. Therefore, yes, I don’t have any mad reverence for him, but in general, if we had more officials (because I still classify him as an official) who would have such a level of erudition, advancement and involvement, then the country would be different. In a sense, I am glad for our country that Gref exists.

— Are you planning any joint projects with Sberbank?

- No. They are too big, how can we partner with them? Sberbank is half of the Russian banking system, and we are a priori partners with them.

— You recently announced your intention to create a virtual operator. Have something to tell?

“We will launch a virtual operator at the end of the year, most likely,” this is all while our virtual operator is sitting here [points to a small office]. There are few of us, but we are wearing vests. I am currently working on this project myself. We believe that the big three have room to move, that one way or another our consumer coincides, of course, there is a convergence of our services, of course, the phone is becoming a bank, the bank is becoming a phone - the number of SMS we send is millions a day already. That is, our applications are becoming similar, we see that operators have moved in our direction, especially MTS, and, of course, we cannot sit idly by. They believe that they will easily enter our clearing and capture it, but I believe that this is not so. They probably also think that we won’t easily enter their clearing and won’t capture anything. I agree with this too. But I believe that in the war between banks and telecoms for payments, banks will win.

16.12.2016 09:00

This pre-holiday party was held under the motto« Closer to the New Year and nature!» . Everything was natural: from the design of a fashionable restaurant"Fahrenheit", where the bank invited guests, to the point of laughter and emotion.

Traditionally, at the end of the year, the credit organization gathers journalists and colleagues for a friendly feast so that everyone can communicate in an informal, pleasant atmosphere. At the entrance to the restaurant, guests were greeted by forest fairies; the tables were decorated with compositions made of moss. The main surprise of the evening also promised to be “green”.

The first deputy chairman of the board of Post Bank, Georgy Gorshkov, was talking so enthusiastically with the press that he did not hear him being persistently called to the table. And already in the midst of the holiday he joked: “I’m open to questions today, I talked to one lovely correspondent for forty minutes. In my opinion, she is not in the hall now - apparently she ran away.”

Of course, not a single journalist left the holiday early. And as soon as the “chief forester” of the bank appeared - Chairman of the Board Dmitry Rudenko - media representatives surrounded him tightly. He began the conversation by summing up the results: “The year has been interesting, and we are in it. And I don’t agree that taking the first steps in a crisis is risky. On the contrary, unstable times give us a lot of unlimited opportunities.”

Meanwhile, Georgy Gorshkov shared good news with FP. Pochta Bank has made an impressive leap in the “People's Rating” of the Banki.ru portal this year. In the main table he moved from 50th place to 33rd, and in the “annual championship” - to 20th place.

“High positions in ratings are not an end in themselves. It is important that the bank meets the aspirations of clients,” Gorshkov commented on the successes. “And it is precisely the people’s assessment that is the most truthful indicator of our work.” If people are unhappy, we need to quickly understand where we went wrong, admit the mistake and correct it. It’s even difficult for me to say who will be a more loyal client: the one who liked everything the first time, or the one who repeatedly criticized the service and then thanked you.”

We moved from words to useful and inspiring deeds: Dmitry Rudenko had to remotely plant the millionth tree as part of the “Give a Forest to a Friend” program. This was the main surprise of the evening. For two years now, any client of Pochta Bank can easily help any nature reserve or national park in Russia by paying for the planting of green spaces to replace those that were lost. To do this, just use the Maraquia Internet service, an ATM or the bank’s website to select a location on the map for the tree and the cost of the seedling.

“When we planted the first bushes, I was inspired by the idea: let’s plant hundreds of thousands! There was a huge amount of ridicule then - even professors from educational institutions were skeptical about our eco-idea, - said the chairman of the board before starting the virtual gardening. - But we managed to involve clients, the project took off. And now, together with you, we will plant a tree that will become the millionth.”

Rudenko went to the bank’s website, found a section dedicated to the action, clicked the mouse four times - and helped restore a beautiful nature reserve in the Irkutsk region, which was heavily damaged by fires this year. He used his bank card to pay for the planting of ten trees. So in March (earlier weather conditions do not allow), thanks to him and local foresters, there will be more greenery in the reserve.

“Now I will begin to monitor the changes in this forest area,” the head of the bank concluded proudly. One got the feeling that he would gladly put on his boots and pick up a shovel.

The baton was again taken up by Georgy Gorshkov, who told what other initiatives Pochta Bank would come up with. For example, next year it is planned to open a branch in the capital of Chukotka - the city of Anadyr. And in a couple of years (according to the strategy), the credit institution will be present in 22,500 locations throughout the country.

Then the head of the bank's press service, Olga Ocheretina, presented diplomas to media representatives. The names of the nominations corresponded to the upbeat atmosphere of the evening: there were no “protocol” nominations among them. Thus, the executive director of the Banki.ru holding and the head of the Finparty project, Elena Ishcheeva, became the winner in the “Perpetual Motion” category, and the co-founder of Banki.ru, Philip Ilyin-Adaev, was recognized as the best business guru of the banking sector.

“I’ve known the bank team for a long time. It’s a pleasure to work with professionals who take advice and criticism from the national portal Banki.ru adequately. I wish you a jar of courage! After all, the city takes courage, and Pochta Bank just needs to expand its network in 2017,” said Elena Ishcheeva, thanking the bank for the award.

The editor-in-chief of the Banki.ru portal Natalya Romanova has earned the title of the fairest editor. “Natasha, you are so good at addressing requests to PR people, you always ask us a lot of non-standard questions. Before calling you, I carefully prepare,” Olga Ocheretina admitted with a laugh.

The bright participant of the show “The Voice” Tina Kuznetsova was responsible for the musical part of the holiday. The singer lit up the hall, not the Christmas tree! However, this evening was not complete without coniferous beauties - the forest fairies gave each guest a living Christmas tree in a tub as a farewell gift.