Matthias Warning is a former Stasi officer who is reputed to be friends with the Russian president since the late 1980s when Vladimir Putin worked as a KGB agent in East Germany.
Photo: Vasily Shaposhnikov
| Other Photos |
 |
|
 |
VTB Hires Putin’s Old Friend
Shareholders of VTB, Russia’s second-largest bank, are to vote on Monday to float a 25 percent additional share issue in the run-up to the bank’s IPO in May. Meanwhile, the bank’s supervisory council recommended Friday two independent directors to sit at the bank’s board. One of them is Mattias Warning, the managing director of the Nord Stream pipeline project and an old friend of President Vladimir Putin.
VTB is to vote at an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting on Monday to float the bank’s additional share issue of 25 percent of its authorized capital.
99-percent state-owned VTB goes public in May. Its supervisory council now has to give its approval to the proposed share issue, setting the time and size of the floatation. Between 20 and 22 percent of it are expected to be sold, raising up to 120 billion rubles in the May public offering. Russians will be offered to buy as much as 5 percent, says VTB President Andrey Kostin. The remaining 2.3 percent of the stock will go to minor shareholders of Promstroibank which will merge with VTB.
The supervisory council’s meeting on Friday voted to include two independent directors at VTB’s board - Yves-Thibault de Silguy, chair of the BOD at Vinci, and Matthias Warning, managing director of Nord Stream and member of the board of Dresdner Bank’s Russian subsidiary.
Matthias Warning has been doing business in Russia since mid-1990s. Mr. Warning now heads Nord Stream, the company which operates the North European Gas Pipeline running from Russia to Germany. East Germany-born Matthias Warning is a former Stasi officer who is reputed to be friends with the Russian president since the late 1980s when Vladimir Putin worked as a KGB agent in East Germany. The banker, however, insists that he met Putin in October 1991 in St. Petersburg.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 19, 2007
|
|
|
