Less than 18 months after moving to Moscow, Henk Paardekooper steered ABN Amro to the center of the two biggest banking transactions in Russian history: a $7.5 billion loan to state oil company Rosneft in early September and a $13 billion credit for natural-gas giant Gazprom three weeks later. Amsterdam-based ABN and Germany's Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein were the only two commercial banks to act as lead arrangers for both facilities, muscling out bigger competitors like Deutsche Bank and Citigroup.

But the modest 41-year old Dutchman stresses that this seemingly meteoric success was in fact built on the 17 years he spent climbing the ABN ladder -- and, more importantly, on the bank's 27-year presence in Russia. "We have been very close to Gazprom for a very, very long time," Paardekooper tells Institutional Investor. "I'd say most of the people have changed since the 1980s, but the corporate relationship remained."

As the Russian state reasserts itself economically, ABN's approach to relationship banking Kremlin-style has paid off for the bank. Rosneft's superloan is earmarked to buy shares of Gazprom, completing Byzantine maneuvers that will bring the state's share in the world's top gas producer to more than 50 percent. Gazprom's own megacredit will be used to buy privately owned oil company Sibneft. More quietly, ABN has helped state-controlled Russian banks break borrowing records for their own sector -- co-leading a $450 million loan to Vneshtorgbank in April, then a $650 million credit for Gazprombank.

A head-office denizen who was in charge of global merger advising for ABN until the Moscow post came up, Paardekooper now plans to stay in Russia indefinitely, shifting the bank's focus to nonenergy companies. He raves, "What's going on here is thrilling."