When a friend from Kommersant called me last week to say that Andrei Kazmin, the head of Russia's largest savings bank Sberbank, had been appointed to run Russia's Postal Service, the first thing I asked was: "Is that a demotion?"
"Why, no," said my friend. "I don't think it is. Postal Service is almost like another ministry. He's been moved to the government. The jobs are more or less equal." Well, it certainly does not seem like Andrei Kazmin shares this view.
Right after the announcement of Kazmin's move to the Postal Service I was told that the new president of Sberbank will be German Gref, who lost his job as the Economic Development and Trade minister in the recent government shake-up. So I was really surprised when the same friend called me Tuesday to say that the news of the day is that Gref's candidacy has been submitted for voting by Sberbank's supervisory board.
"But didn't he get the job already?" I asked.
"Oh, no," my friend said. "There has been much opposition to this appointment."
"By whom?" I asked.
"Well, by Sberbank employees," he said. "Kazmin and Alyoshkina [Sberbank's deputy head and Kazmin's wife] were very much against it."
And when they understood that their opposition won't amount to anything, they went and sold their stakes in the bank. Surprisingly, this did not create any panic on the market, although a number of analysts have said that if the top management is selling the bank's shares then it's bad news for the bank. As if nobody considered for the moment that Alyoshkina and Kazmin are selling their shares not because they have some insider information about the bank's situation (after all, that would be illegal), but more out of spite - spite for the appointment that cannot be refused, spite for the feeling that no one is listening to their arguments.
German Gref's nomination for the bank's chief is the finale of this strange epic. The vote hasn't taken place yet, but it seems that all the opposition (in Sberbank and Central Bank circles - CB owns 60 percent of Sberbank and has a decisive say in all staff-related decisions) has proven futile and Gref's official appointment is only a matter of time. What surprises me is that this issue has created such a stir. I was talking to one of the former Central Bank chiefs Tuesday who told me: "I don't understand the need to appoint Russia's second most-hated man after Chubais to head the country's largest savings bank. He does not even have banking experience! He should have been appointed to head the Bank for Reconstruction and Development! What will he do at Sberbank?"
I think that everybody either fails to see or disregards the obvious truth that German Gref is not expected to do anything at Sberbank. The country's oldest bank, which was the only savings institution in the Soviet era and still enjoys a loyal following, is such a leviathan that it pretty much runs on its own. German Gref at the head of the bank is no more than a figure of decorum. There is no logic, of course, in placing a liberal economist in a place of a financier, but then there isn't much logic in placing a financier to govern a huge logistics company (what the Postal Service basically is) either.
What surprises me the most in this appointment is the fact that German Gref had agreed to it. After his dismissal in late September Gref said: "Any person has to change the sphere of activities to work more efficiently... Any official, and I am no exception, should experience for himself the rules that he established while in the government." Back then he admitted that does not yet know his future plans, but there was a feeling that he might go into private business for a change. It seems that the perks of working in the state machinery are hard to give up - and Sberbank is definitely a state institution despite the fact that it held a "popular IPO" and has numerous minority shareholders. Then again, the only person who knows why Gref agreed to head Sberbank and what he will do in this position is Gref himself. Maybe he needs a rest and the position suits him for that. Or maybe he just thrives on adversity.
