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Big Russian private-sector banks are like mushrooms. Every decade, a new crop spring up, dominate the landscape for a few years and then either blow up spectacularly or disappear without trace.
The one exception to this rule is Alfa-Bank. For nearly 30 years, the lender has weathered the repeated storms that have battered Russian banking, each time emerging stronger than ever. Much of the credit for this remarkable longevity goes to the bank’s long-serving president, Petr Aven.
An economist by training, Aven joined Alfa-Bank after a brief spell as a minister in Russia’s first post-Soviet government, where he was tasked by Boris Yeltsin with making the rouble convertible and liberalizing foreign trade. That done, he made a rapid exit from politics.
“I quickly understood that the day-to-day of political life wasn’t for me,” he says.
In 1994, he met Mikhail Fridman, founder of the rapidly expanding conglomerate Alfa Group.
