EBRD: Losing other people's money

EBRD: Losing other people’s money

The EBRD's shareholders demanded that the bank be big in Russia. The investment bankers running the place responded by making deals. The result? €261.2 million ($284 million) of losses last year more than half due to provisioning against the Russian portfolio. New president Horst Köhler says that strategy not volume must drive programmes in future - corporate governance, institution building and lending to small enterprises are his top priorities. But below him not a single head has rolled even though EBRD bankers sat on the boards of Russian banks that went under. Only in a public institution would they get off so lightly. Brian Caplen reports.

Where to from here?

It is Thursday March 11 and the press conference to announce the EBRD’s financial losses is about to start. Deputy vice president David Hexter, who has overall responsibility for financial institutions and who sat on the board of the now-defunct Russian bank Tokobank, is sitting next to the bank’s vice president of finance Steven Kaempfer.

What happens next says as much about the EBRD’s attitude towards the concept of public accountability as it does about the mistakes made in its Russian portfolio – Tokobank started to go wrong only three months after the EBRD invested in it.

EBRD: Losing other people’s money

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EBRD: Losing other people’s money

Thanks for your interest in Euromoney!To unlock this article:

The world’s best private banks for digital

Rebuilding banks from the inside out in the digital age

Eastward bound: Why Gulf banks are tapping Asia’s capital markets

Islamic Finance Innovation 2025

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