One notable exception: Philadelphia native Charlie Ryan, who on November 3 sold 40 percent of his Moscow-based investment bank, United Financial Group, to Deutsche Bank for a cool $70 million. The 36-year-old UFG co-founder and CEO split the payout with his partner, former Russian Finance minister Boris Fyodorov, and a dozen top UFG managers.
Was this a case of Ryan bailing out of Russia while he still could? Certainly not, he protests. He and Fyodorov insisted on keeping a majority stake in UFG, Ryan notes, and he will remain at the helm, continuing to arrange financing for growth companies that can diversify Russia’s commodity-driven economy. “The big international banks are totally obsessed with five or ten companies here,” he says, “but Russia is also going to produce a Wal-Mart. By 2010 it will be Europe’s biggest market for computers.”
Ryan’s road to riches began in 1990 when he attended a luncheon speech in New York by Jacques Attali, the colorful founding president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. At the time, Ryan, who had majored in Russian history at Harvard, was working as “an indentured servant” at Credit Suisse First Boston. By mid-1991 he had joined the EBRD in St. Petersburg.
One of his first contacts was Fyodorov, the EBRD’s Soviet country manager. Another was Vladimir Putin, who was then deputy for international relations under St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak. “Sobchak was a great orator, but we used to wait until he was out of town so we could go see Putin and get things done,” Ryan recalls.
He and Fyodorov started UFG in 1994, buying out their partner, Paribas, after the 1998 ruble devaluation. That proved to be a smart move. And unlike Khodorkovsky, Ryan can take his money and go home if his friendship with President Putin sours.
