Vadim Belyaev

Vadim Stanislavovich Belyaev (born Wolfson, 28 May 1966) is a Russian businessman, banker and investor.

He is one of the founders, a major shareholder, former chief executive and board chairman of Otkritie Holding, once the largest privately held financial group in Russia, and as such the former major shareholder of Otkritie Bank.

Vadim Belyaev was born on 28 May 1966, in Moscow, into the family of Russian scientists, Stanislav Wolfson and Natalia Belyaeva.

His father, Stanislav Wolfson, was an engineer, and well-known as an author of high school chemistry textbooks.

Born Vadim Wolfson, with his father's surname, he later adopted his mother's.

In 1989, he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Radio Equipment, Electronics and Automation (MIREA), later renamed the Russian Technology University, with a degree in electronic acoustics and ultrasound engineering.

After graduation, Belyaev was employed as a computer programmer at the Soviet shipbuilding ministry, following which he briefly worked as an IT-specialist for a private firm.

In 1992, Belyaev began to trade in the developing Russian securities market.

The next year he set up a fund to trade in the recently issued Russian government privatization vouchers.

Soon after, Belyaev joined Aura Bank in Moscow to lead and manage its securities trading department.

In 1994 Aura Bank was reorganized as the Moscow Petrochemical Bank and Belyaev became the chief executive officer's deputy.

In 1995, Belyaev earned a degree in banking and insurance from the Russian government-sponsored Financial University in Moscow (FinU).

He also holds a certificate in capital markets from the London-based Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI).

In 1995, Belyaev teamed up with some managers of the Moscow office of Italtel Ltd, an Italian telecommunication equipment producer, to launch an investment firm called VEO-Invest, investing principally in local telecommunications assets.

In 1997, Belyaev became CEO at VEO-Invest and expanded the firm's activities into wider brokerage services and financial consulting.

Belyaev initially owned about 10% of VEO-Invest, but after the 1998 financial crisis in Russia, he bought out the other shareholders’ stakes and became sole owner.

In 2001, VEO-Invest and another brokerage, BK Otkritie, merged, resulting in the creation of VEO-Otkritie, of which Belyaev owned 75%.

In 2004 Belyaev's tennis partner, Russian businessman Boris Mints invested in VEO-Otkritie.

The company rebranded as Investment Group Otkritie, later renamed Otkritie Holding.

Belyaev remained as CEO and Mints became the chairman of the board of directors.

In 2006 the partners bought a small local lender, Shchit (“Shield”) Bank, and renamed it Otkritie Bank.

In 2007-2008, Otkritie worked with the Russian electricity grid monopoly RAO UES, which was undergoing reorganization and restructuring under the oversight of Anatoly Chubais, who had won international renown for his handling of privatization in post-Soviet Russia.

According to The Financial Times, in 2008, state-controlled VTB bank provided Otkritie with a loan to set up a $2.4bn fund to trade shares of the smaller power utilities that split from RAO UES as a result of the reorganization.

In 2009, the fund was sold to an offshore firm under the management of Xenon Capital Partners (an investment company set up by Natalia Tsukanova, the former head of JPMorgan's investment banking in Russia).

In a separate deal, VTB acquired a 20% stake in Otkritie in 2009 for approximately $150m.

In 2012, Otkritie took over Nomos Bank, a top-ten Russian lender, using a $1bn loan provided by VTB.

By this time, Boris Mints had already sold his shares, making Belyaev the largest stakeholder.

Through numerous acquisitions and organic growth, by the end of 2015, Otkritie had evolved into Russia's largest privately held bank, with total assets of 3.3 Trillion rubles (equal to US$49 billion at the time).

In 2015, Belyaev resigned as CEO of Otkritie Holding to chair the board of directors and concentrate on strategic issues (under the Russian law, one person cannot simultaneously serve as the board chairman and the chief executive of the same entity).

In late 2016 Otkritie initiated a takeover of Rosgosstrakh, the country's largest insurer at the moment, which had suffered huge losses by then.

The deal was initially suggested and later approved by the central bank.

After the agreement was signed in December 2016, in the presence of the central bank's chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina and her deputy Sergey Shvetsov, Otkritie launched a due diligence of Rosgosstrakh.

The checkup revealed that the insurer's problems were far greater than Otkritie had expected.

In early July ACRA, the newly-established Russian credit rating agency, de facto controlled by the central bank, unexpectedly gave Otkritie a junk rating.

In August 2017, following the rating downgrade, Otkritie suffered a run on its deposits.

On August 29, 2017, the Russian Central Bank intervened to take control.

Dmitry Tulin, who was a deputy chairman at the central bank at the moment, admits that the intervention was basically triggered by the attempted takeover of Rosgosstrakh.

The Central Bank's case does not assert any fraud or negligence by Belyaev; it simply seeks damages for “missed future gains” on the theory that its 2017 investment to shore-up Otkritie's balance sheet is tantamount to a 20-year interest-free loan and that if the Central Bank's funds were deployed instead to make interest-bearing loans, this would generate interest income equal to the claimed 290bn rubles through 2037.

In July 2019, the Central Bank and Otkritie Bank filed a civil lawsuit in Russian court against Belyaev and four other former senior executives of Otkritie Holding and Otkritie Bank (ex-chairman of the bank's board Yevgeny Dankevich, former vice president Gennady Zhuzhlev, ex-head of the board of directors Ruben Aganbegyan, and former member of the board of directors Elena Budnik) for “damages” of 290bn rubles (over $4.5bn), allegedly incurred as a result of the Central Bank's intervention.

As of January 2020, the case was still at an early stage.