| MDM Bank and PSB exchanged pleasantries The cold war has been smoldering in the banking world of St. Petersburg for a month now. The reason for it was the invasion of the Moscow MDM Bank into the patrimony of the St. Petersburg Industrial and Construction Bank. Muscovites got ahead of PSB by absorbing Petrovsky Narodny Bank, the leader in the St. Petersburg pension deposit market. Not resting on its laurels, MDM Bank strengthened the management of Petrovsky at the expense of its opponents: the chairman of the board of PSB, Olga Kazanskaya, left to manage the new acquisition of Muscovites.
The influential Vladimir Kogan, who heads the board of directors of PSB, apparently regarded the actions of competitors as a declaration of war. In retaliation, Muscovites were not allowed to sponsor the X International Banking Congress. MDM Bank did not remain in debt, taking over from PSB sponsorship of the VI North-West Interbank Conference (NWIC), which will be held on June 27-30.
What financier would refuse a business trip to St. Petersburg during the white nights? It is not surprising that SZMK is popular with bankers. Last year the conference was held under the auspices of the PSB. It was expected that the bank would remain its sponsor this time too. However, on June 13, SZMK participants received a letter signed by the acting. Chairman of the Board of PSB Vladimir Skatin and President of the Association of Commercial Banks of St. Petersburg (AKB) Vladimir Dzhikovich, who, on behalf of the organizers of the conference, “regrettedly informed... about the impossibility of holding it within the specified time frame for technical reasons.”
But SZMK participants will not have to hand over tickets or return travel allowances to the ticket office. On the evening of the same day they received a letter with the opposite content. President of the Association of Russian Banks Sergei Egorov, head of the St. Petersburg State Central Bank Nadezhda Savinskaya and head of MDM Bank Andrei Melnichenko reported that the promised conference would take place. It’s just that instead of PSB, MDM Bank and the International Banking Institute took patronage over SZMK.
The scandal surrounding SZMK is a direct consequence of PSB personnel losses. Together with Ms. Kazanskaya, two of her deputies, Dmitry Istyufeev and Tatyana Krylova, who worked under her at the Baltic Bank, left the board of PSB. It was Ms. Krylova who was the main “engine” of SZMK for six years. Her departure “on vacation” was interpreted by the leadership of the PSB as treason, and it is not customary for us to stand on ceremony with traitors.
PSB explains the incident with SZMK for purely technical reasons. “We were sponsors of the conference as long as we had the opportunity to control its preparation,” says a PSB representative. “Last week it became clear that we cannot take responsibility for what the organizers promised the participants.”
Ms. Krylova does not agree with this interpretation. “It would be nice if they refused sponsorship, but they just went ahead and declared that the conference would not take place,” she told the Vremya Novostei newspaper. She calls the behavior of PSB managers “emotional,” wondering why the nervousness of her former colleagues was transferred to the Association of St. Petersburg Banks, which, in her words, took a “unilateral position.”
Our newspaper was unable to find out what explains the position of the AKB: Mr. Dzhikovic declined to comment.
There is no end in sight to the battle between bankers' egos, and some analysts are looking for the deep roots of the conflict. The intransigence of the fighters is explained, in their opinion, by the fact that in the city on the Neva not just two large banks collided, but the vanguard of two financial and industrial alliances - relatively speaking, PSB - Severstal and MDM Bank - Russian Aluminum " Vladimir FEDORIN |
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