| Commerzbank moved to an office overlooking the Kremlin Foreign investors tend to complain about the poor business climate that prevents them from investing large amounts of money in Russia. The experience of their more successful colleagues, who work quietly in our country, shows that such complaints should be taken with a certain amount of irony. Instead of complaining about the imperfections of the universe, the real sharks of capitalism enlist the support of influential people and do business regardless of the feelings of the progressive world community.
Yesterday, the Russian “daughter” of the German Commerzbank - Commerzbank (Eurasia) - celebrated its move to a new office. By pure coincidence, this event practically coincided with the anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration. For Russia and Commerzbank, which acquired its own bank here in December 1998, the eve of the millennium turned out to be successful. The country's GDP and gold and foreign exchange reserves increased, and the Russified Commerzbank ended the year for the first time with a small profit (24.3 million rubles), having increased its loan portfolio more than tenfold.
Together with Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, Commerzbank is one of the “big three” German banks. Its market capitalization exceeds $39 billion, and its net profit last year ($1.2 billion) was comparable to the pre-tax book profit of the 30 largest Russian banks combined.
Financiers from Commerzbank are well versed in the Russian situation: the bank’s representative office in the USSR appeared back in 1974. In 1994, the bank opened its branches in St. Petersburg and Tyumen, and a little later it opened a representative office in Novosibirsk. According to the Vremya Novostei newspaper, in the first years after the collapse of the Union, the bank served about 14% of Russian-German trade turnover.
Intuition, coupled with knowledge of the situation, told German bankers back in 1996 that the path to the heart of Russia lay through the North-West. It was then that Commerzbank, through its Luxembourg subsidiary First National Holding SA, bought a 51% stake in the St. Petersburg telecommunications holding Telecominvest. Over the past years, the holding's shares have grown before our eyes: its former head Leonid Reiman now heads the Ministry of Communications, and the head of the Moscow representative office of Telecominvest, Lyudmila Putina (1998-1999), turned out to be the wife of the Russian President in 2000.
In Russia, Commerzbank is emphatically cautious. It does not buy government securities and does not accept deposits from the public. This did not stop him from increasing his assets by 56% in 2000, bringing them to 2.7 billion rubles. The amount of loans to the real sector increased almost 11 times, and as of January 1, 2001, “long” loans accounted for 56% of Commerzbank’s loan portfolio. True, lending to the economy has not yet become the bank’s main source of income. According to Interfax, last year it received three quarters of its interest income from the interbank loan market. Vladimir FEDORIN |
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