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ACCORDING TO YURI Trushin, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Rosselkhozbank (Russian Agricultural Bank or RAB), the bank’s mission statement is a simple one: "We’re the gene fund for Russia." As mission statements go that’s a pretty dramatic one.
It’s a measure of the political importance of the bank’s role in reviving rural Russia – home to 25% of the country’s 140 million population – that RAB was created barely three months after president Vladimir Putin came to power at the start of 2000.
It’s an even greater measure that having been created with just $11 million of seed capital from the government, the bank has now grown at breakneck speed to become one of the country’s top 10 banks. It now boasts a $15 billion balance sheet, $1.2 billion in equity capital, $9 billion in assets and 1,000 offices spanning the length and breadth of the Russian Federation. As a result, it now employs 12,000 employees, up from 5,000 in 2005.