VTB to hold annual shareholder meeting earlier than usual, in April, board to be headed by state official
MOSCOW. Dec 15 (Interfax) - VTB is holding its annual shareholders meeting, at which the new supervisory board will be elected, on April 26 and the head of the supervisory board will be a high-ranking government representative, VTB President and CEO Andrei Kostin said.
"As concerns the chairman of the supervisory board, the agreement we have is such: VTB will hold the next meeting on April 2016. It will be slightly earlier, usually they happen in June, but due to the fact that our report will be ready already in March, we decided to hold the next annual meeting on April 26. At the meeting a new supervisory board will be elected, including the new chairman," he said during an interview on Rossiya 24.
Kostin said that on December 14, VTB selected former Central Bank of Russia Governor Sergei Dubinin as the acting chairman instead of Alexei Ulyukayev. Dubinin already held this post in 2011-2014, he has been on VTB's supervisory board since 2011 and he is in charge of the nomination and remunerations committee.
Kostin said that the supervisory board elected two new management members on December 14, Mikhail Zadornov and Gennady Soldatenkov. "The election of new management members is an unconventional event, because this is not simply some personnel appointment, both new members of management, Zadornov and Soldatenkov, are people who are now in charge of our subsidiaries [VTB 24 and BM Bank , formerly Bank of Moscow], alone their election is connected with structural changes to the system of organizing VTB Group management, therefore they are meaningful, not only personal," he said.
The new management board members will receive additional powers within the group, Kostin said.
The group plans to merge VTB Bank and its retail arm, VTB24, by January 2018.
"The date of the merger is the first working day after the January holidays of 2018. We essentially have one year for this. We've already set up a commission for the merger with VTB24. Within the context of this work, I think that a number of people will already move from VTB24 to work at VTB in the first quarter of next year. We expect some changes in the management board, but the final structure will take shape only after the merger. When the banks merge into one, we will have to make one management board from two. This is done on a competitive basis, I don't think that only executives of VTB Bank should hold key positions," Kostin said, adding that some VTB24 executives will hold key positions in the merged bank.
The merger of the banks will save the group money, he said, without specifying the amount of anticipated savings.