Nikolay Tsekhomsky

Nikolay Viktorovich Tsekhomsky (; born March 21, 1974, Leningrad, Russia) is a financier and top manager. Specializes in business transformation, optimization for financing structure, investment and risk management, working with a wide range of private and public investors, project financing. He headed the financial departments of MTS, Renaissance Capital and VTB banks; held the position of Chairman of the Board of Barclays bank, was a senior vice president and board member of Sberbank of Russia. The current First Deputy Chairman, a member of the Board ofVnesheconombank.

Biography

Education, beginning of career 

Nikolay Tsekhomsky was born in Leningrad on March 21, 1974. In 1995 he graduated from the St. Petersburg academy for engineering and economics with a degree in Management, in 1996 - with a degree in Economics and Management in Machine building industry. In senior courses he headed the Saint Petersburg Regional Committee of the International Student Association AIESEC. In 1999, after completing his post-graduate studies, he received a  PhD degree in Economics.

He studied COL at INSEAD (France) and YPO-HBS at Harvard Business School (USA). While being a senior manager at Sberbank, he studied at Stanford University. He taught at the Corporate University of Sberbank on the program “Leaders teach leaders”, gives open lectures at MGIMO, HSE, RANEPA, NES and other universities of the Russian Federation.

Tsekhomsky's career began in 1995 in the Saint Petersburg office of auditing company Ernst & Young. After having worked as an economist and auditor for two years, he moved to the  London office as a senior auditor. In August 1998, Tsekhomsky returned to Russia as a financial controller and chief accountant of the Moscow representative office of the  American  investment bank Brunswick UBS Warburg. He subsequently retained the position despite the redundancy dismissal of 250 out of 300 staff following the default and financial crisis in 1998.

In 1999, Tsekhomsky accepted the invitation Stephen Jennings and moved to the investment bank Renaissance Capital to the position of financial director. He was engaged in restructuring the “Renaissance” affected by the crisis and debugging business processes.

MTS 

In September 2002, Tsekhomsky took a similar position within the structure of the telecommunications operator Mobile TeleSystems, and in July of the following year he was promoted to Vice President in finance and investment. His task was to overcome the fragmentation of business, which was caused by the multiple acquisitions of other market participants: the regional companies acquired by MTS retained their own management,  standards and  reporting systems, different from those of the parent company.

At the initiative of Tsekhomsky, the organizational structure of the financial department was changed; the branch network of the operator was divided into 10 Super Regions with the financial directors accountable to the Tsekhomsky, responsible for standardization and reporting by regions.

In addition, Tsekhomsky was a member of the supervisory board of MTS subsidiary Ukrainian Mobile Communications, he organized several issues of MTS  Eurobonds, supervised the reporting of the public company to regulatory authorities in the  United States  and  Russia  (MTS shares were traded on  New York and  London Stock Exchanges) and participated in the preparation of the  initial public offer of the main shareholder of the company —  AFK Sistema.

VTB 

The appointment of Tsekhomsky as Senior Vice President and Financial Director of Vneshtorgbank in October 2005 occurred within the bank's preparation for partial privatization through IPO after abandoning plans to attract a strategic investor (which included the  European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Deutsche Bank and Mediobanca (англ.)русск.). Tsekhomsky has also worked on the development of a stock options plan at a financial institution, and was a member of the Supervisory Board of VTB's  Industrial and Construction Bank of Saint Petersburg, Kyiv JSB Mriya (after the IPO, they became members of VTB in the status of branches - VTB North-West and VTB Ukraine, respectively) and  VTB 24.

Stock offering was held in May 2007 on the  Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange and  the  London Stock Exchange, organized by Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Renaissance Capital. The IPO, in which the bank raised $8 billion for 22.5% of shares, including 1.5 billion from 131 thousand private investors in Russia, became the most massive in the history of the national stock market and the largest bank offering in Europe. Market participants, in particular, the President of Renaissance Capital  Ruben Aganbegyan, noted that the IPO of a large bank was Tsekhomsky's great professional success as a financier.

Barclays Bank 

Barclays Bank was created in spring 2008 on the basis of the acquisition of  Expobank by a financial group and was Barclays' second attempt to open a commercial bank in Russia (the first ended in failure and losses of £250 million in 1998). At the time of purchase, Expobank held 77th place in the country in terms of capital with 30.7 billion rubles but during the crisis period of 2008—2009, its assets decreased by 48%, and the bank fell to 127th place. By October 2009, the share of overdue debt in the corporate portfolio reached 30%, in retail — 14%, in 2009 Barclays invested 4.3 billion rubles into the bank's capitalization.

Since the fall of 2008, the financial group was looking for an experienced  top manager to manage the subsidiary bank, and, in the spring of 2009, the head of retail and corporate business of the British bank Frits Siggers began negotiations with Tsekhomsky. In November 2009 Tsekhomsky started working at Barclays Bank, it was the time when the decision was made in favor of retail business development. In the summer of 2010 Tsekhomsky presented a new strategy limiting the geography of work by Moscow and  Saint Petersburg and focusing on mortgage products, development of corporate and retail lending, corporate services and wealthy individuals.

Despite the increase in financial indicators of Barclays Bank, at the end of 2010 Tsekhomsky made a proposal to sell the bank, which coincided with the change in Barclay's strategy in favor of abandoning the risky and unpromising assets. In February 2011, the financial group officially announced the search for a buyer. In October 2011, the bank became the property of a group of investors headed by the banker Igor Kim, a co-owner of Vostochny Express Bank and MDM Bank. In December he succeeded Tsekhomsky as chairman of the board

Sberbank 

In November 2012 it got out that as a result of the first in two years personnel replacements within the management of  Sberbank of Russia, Tsekhomsky will head the financial department. Soon he was appointed adviser to the bank's president Herman Gref , and in January he became Vice President and Director in Finance and became a member of the board. In July 2014 Tsekhomsky became one of three senior vice-presidents of Sberbank.

Under the leadership of Tsekhomsky, the organization implemented a strategic program for the implementation of the cost management system of the Bank “Smart expenses”. Based on the results of the three-year Program by 2016, fundamentally new processes of management of expenses of the bank were developed, allowing to achieve the effect of optimization of more than 100 billion rubles.

VEB.RF

Following Deputy Herman Gref Sergey Gorkov, who was appointed new head of  Vnesheconombank in February 2016, Tsekhomsky took a position of adviser in VEB.RF. Later Tsekhomsky was appointed first deputy chairman of the board .

Nikolay Tsekhomsky is one of the co-authors of the new strategy of VEB.RF, which develops the partnership model of relationships and focuses on maximizing the impact of investments rather than on the growth of the loan portfolio of the group.

In VEB.RF Tsekhomsky supervised the Finance and Development section, which included more than ten divisions, including economy and finance, risks, treasury , direction of international capital markets  and work with investors. On July 14, 2016, under his leadership, VEB.RF conducted a record placement of bonds denominated in US dollars with settlements in rubles. Demand for bonds amounted to more than $1 billion, due to which it was decided to double the volume of issue — from $300 million to $600 million .

When Igor Shuvalov joined the State Development Corporation , Nikolay Tsekhomsky headed the investment business. During the period from the end of 2018 and in 2019, under his leadership, the Project Finance Factory mechanism , was launched, funding was opened for a number of major transactions in the field of gas chemistry (links Kuybyshev, Shchyokino) and metallurgy . The syndicated transaction to finance the construction of Udokan Mining and Metallurgical Combine received the award as the “Best Deal in the Syndication Market of the Russian Federation” from the Loans Cbonds Awards in 2019 .

A number of infrastructure projects have been implemented. Khabarovsk Airport has been launched. A number of projects for the construction of vessels at the shipyard of “Zvezda” capable of navigation in the northern latitudes, have been approved. Funding has already been opened for two projects . Transactions on financing the construction of the 4th section of the Central Ring Road, creation of a system of marking and traceability of goods were approved by the Supervisory Board of VEB.RF (reference to the speech of DAM).

Export deliveries of Russian mechanical engineering products to more than 12 countries were realized: delivery of wagons for Tashkent metro (Uzbekistan) , the supply of wagons to Kazakhstan, the supply of equipment for the modernization of power plants in several CIS countries .

Other 
In December 2009 Tsekhomsky was included in the reserve of management personnel under the patronage of the acting president of Russia  Dmitry Medvedev .

Acknowledgement 

Tsekhomsky repeatedly took high places in the all-Russian ratings of managers drawn up by the Association of Managers of Russia. In 2005, the restructuring of MTS assets brought him 5th place in the list of 200 best financial directors . Together with the first place in the ranking of 2008, he received the Aristos Prize, awarded annually by the Association and publishing house Kommersant. A year later, he won the first place in the category of financial directors of commercial banks. After taking position in Barclays Bank, Tsekhomsky took the 10th place in the rating of heads of commercial banks in 2010. The interview with him was also included in the book of “Time. Business. People. 2005—2014: Best of TOP-1000 Russian Managers”, prepared by the Association of managers of Russia and the “Snob” project and published by “Alpina Publisher”  in September 2015.

In addition, in 2008 Tsekhomsky was included in the rating of “33 peppers” compiled by the “Finance” magazine which unites successful entrepreneurs and managers aged up to 33. In 2012 he joined the jury of the industry award for financial executives “Russian CFO Awards” organized by the Adam Smith Institute . In 2018, Tsekhomsky was awarded with the Gratitude of the Government of the Russian Federation

Personal life 

Married with three children.

Tsekhomsky is engaged in charitable activities. He was a donor and a member of the board of trustees of the charity fund “Warm House”, was a member of the board of directors of the charity fund “Road Together”, was a sponsor of the art center for orphans “Children of Mary” and the non-profit educational project UWC Dilijan, jointly established by Armenian and British charitable foundations. Regularly supports and participates in the activities of the charity fund for the elderly and disabled people “The joy of old age”.

References

Category:1974 births
Category:Living people
Category:Russian chief executives
Category:People from Saint Petersburg