Director of Equity Financing, FINAM Investment Company, Moscow
Former FFMS director Oleg Vyugin
Last Thursday Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed an executive order relieving Oleg Vyugin from his position as director of the Federal Financial Markets Service. As of Thursday, there was no official confirmation of this move on the FFMS web page and Oleg Vyugin’s biography was still posted on the site. However, Mr. Vyugin made some statements last year suggesting that he is looking for more dynamic work than supervising bureaucrats.
All Russian financial market experts agree that he did an exceptionally good job leading FFMS. Compared to March 2004, when Vyugin took office, this year an estimated 70% of all transactions involving Russian securities will be completed in Russia's stock markets. A far-sighted policy implemented by Mr. Vyugin (requiring 30% of listed transactions to be done in Russia) has brought a considerable number of Russian IPOs back home.
Oleg Vyugin (center) talking to Dutch students about regulating Russian financial markets at the Netherlands' Leiden University in 2005 (Photo by: FFMS website)
Mr. Vyugin is neither a career government functionary nor a newcomer to global finance – between 1999 and 2002 he worked as Chief Economist and Executive Vice President of Troika Dialog. According to some newspaper reports in Russia, he interviewed with Goldman Sachs in February of this year, and will join the multinational investment bank very soon.
In my opinion, this is another interesting move for Goldman Sachs, coming on the heels of their recent public letter to President Putin announcing the expansion of their business in Russia. I guess this will put the investment bank in an exceptional position in the Russian marketplace; Goldman Sachs is now ready to profit from the in-depth knowledge and expertise that Mr. Vyugin has gained in public service the last three years.
The new Head of the FFMS is Mr. Vladimir Milovidov, a well known expert in financial markets, who is currently Assistant to the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation.
You can read the original post at Vladimir Kuznetsov's blog, Equity Financing in Russia. The views expressed in this post and on his blog are the personal opinions of Vladimir Kuznetsov, and are reproduced here solely for educational purposes. To read more Russia Blog posts about Russian capital markets, click on the finance section or type www.russiablog.org/finance in your web browser.
