Sergey Gorkov last seven years has worked at Sberbank: first, optimize the personnel policy during the reform of the state Bank, which was started by Herman Gref, and then studied international business of the Bank. He started his career Gorkov in Bank Menatep and Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Former colleagues say about him as a talented recruiter.
“Was one of five people who really ruled the company”
Sergey Gorkova 47 years old, he was born on 1 December 1968 in the Orenburg region. In 1994 he graduated from the FSB Academy, specialty “jurisprudence”, then, in 2002, Russian economic Academy named after G. V. Plekhanov, specialty “Finance and credit”. A source close to VEB said that, in his opinion, another important factor when choosing a new head of state was that a person must be not only financial, but also “violent past”. Of the 11 Vice-Herman Gref only Gorkov has the appropriate experience.
After graduating from the Academy of the FSB Gorkov has worked as Deputy chief and then chief of Department on work with personnel of Bank “Menatep” (1994-1997), and then in management positions personnel services to the oil companies “YUKOS” and “YUKOS-Moscow” (1997-2005).
Managing Director of Arbat Capital, the former financial Director of Yukos Alexey holubovych, remembers Gor in oil companies. “This was a wonderful organizer, which from scratch created personnel service company,” he said. Former personnel officer of Yukos was well versed in the business, said the financier. “It competence were significantly wider than HR, so I think it played a role in the expansion of the savings Bank outside Russia. If the Bank acquires new assets, the efficiency of these units depends on proper strategy and selection of personnel,” says Golubovic.
The former head of the legal Department of Yukos and “YUKOS-Moscow” Dmitry Gololobov confirms that Khodorkovsky powers Gor go beyond the HR Department. He calls Gor a good leader with the “talent to work with people”. “He [Gorkov] long worked with the staff in Yukos, and then became administrative Director, and under his management appeared several departments. At Yukos, he was one of the key managers and, perhaps, was one of five people who actually ran the company,” said Gololobov.
Despite this, during the Yukos case Gorkov does not hurt and quickly got to the new place, said Forbes, a former oil company lawyer Pavel Ivlev: “he is doing well under the current regime”. This is confirmed by Dmitry Gololobov: “I didn’t even see that he gave any official statements during the investigation”.
Influential personnel officer
After the “Yukos” Gorkov three years (2005 to 2008) was a member of the Board of Directors of Fesco transportation group, and in November 2008 came to work in Sberbank, which the year before was headed by Herman Gref. Gorkov became the Director of the Department of personnel policy of the Bank, and in October 2010 he was introduced to the management Board and appointed Deputy Chairman of the management Board of Sberbank. Recently he was in charge of the savings Bank in the work of the unit “International operations”.
Gorkov virtually from scratch created in the savings Bank the system of work with personnel, says a former top Manager of the Bank. “To him the personnel Department basically just “made out of paper” on hiring, sick leaves and vacations,” he recalls. On a post of the Chairman of Gorkov could easily “wrap” documents, approved and authorized by the Gref and had a real impact on the dismissal and appointment of senior managers, says the source .
Publicly Gorkov practically not performed. In December 2009, Forbes published excerpts from his lectures at the Higher school of Economics. At that time, Gorkov for a year worked as the HR Director at Sberbank, which conducted large-scale reduction. In two years, the staff of Sberbank fell by 30 thousand to 270 thousand people at the end of 2008 to 240 thousand people at the end of 2010.
The savings Bank at the time, according to Gor, there were two main problems: non-optimized costs and the “over-saturation of Bank personnel”. Automating processes, Gorkov was going “part of the freed people to use”: “for Example, we need more staff for lending. Without them, we simply do not have time: we have no technology”. Gorkov planned reduction “at the expense of people of different professions.” “We don’t provide special reductions for pensioners. For us the balance is very important, and pensioners are more stable than young people. I don’t think they need to indiscriminately send on pension,” he added.
Gorkov told about the introduction of the savings system for assessing the competence of the staff, which was called “5+”. “Take, for example, tellers. Check them on several criteria: the quality of their own work, ability to work in team, ability to think of something to streamline the process. The results are recorded in the personal card portrait. The head carries their assessment test,” said Gorkov. In the end, he said, was the opportunity to create a portrait of the teller and take it to one of the categories — “bad worker”, “good worker”, “star”. According to Gor, this technology was to extend to all offices of Sberbank.
The banker Affairs
After the appointment of the Chairman of the Board of Gorkov engaged in international transactions of the savings Bank: banks in Europe and Turkey, Sberbank acquired under his leadership, adds the source . In February 2012, Sberbank closed the deal on acquisition of 100% stake in the Austrian Volksbank International AG in September 2012 99,85% of shares in Turkish DenizBank.
Not all purchases went smoothly. For example, the first foreign acquisition by Sberbank of Volksbank International, the Eastern European unit of Austrian banking group OVAG, including banks in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Ukraine. After closing it became clear that the quality of the loan portfolio of the banking group is significantly worse than was seen prior to the transaction. Sources of “Vedomosti” said that nedorazvedany amount is “significant” — 80 million euros. Later, the head of Sberbank German Gref in the interview to Financial Times said that the Bank may claim compensation from Austrian Volksbank AG due to the low quality of assets of sold subsidiaries.
“Gorkov met repeatedly with minority shareholders, told about foreign expansion of the savings Bank. First plans, for example, the purchase of DenizBank and Volksbank, then the fact of their acquisition. Talked about the difficulties, who can learn, who, on the contrary, we must learn how to integrate the system,” says the Chairman of the Committee on interaction with minority shareholders of the savings Bank Anton Danilov-Danilyan, adding that he showed “himself a professional, easily answered all the questions and loved to shareholders”.
Danilov-Danilyan noted that he did not know Gor as an independent organizer of business, but “what he as a Director, who leads the international direction, cope with deals so that the organization gets as a result a good profit, it is a fact”. “There [in the beginning] will need these skills: knowledge of the external debt as VEB’s borrowings and relationships with foreign financial institutions, large non-performing loans, non-core assets, says a source close to state Corporation. — He [Gorkov] easy-going, engaged the entire Ukrainian problem, is responsible in “Savings” for relations with financial institutions, all international purchases of the state Bank. Gref trusts him. He’s a former intelligence officer”.
