Guriev withdraws as Sberbank supervisory board candidate
MOSCOW. May 28 (Interfax) - Sergei Guriev, a member of the supervisory board of Sberbank of Russia and Rector of the Russian School of Economics, has submitted a note to the bank requesting withdrawal of his nomination to the supervisory board for personal reasons, Sberbank said in a press release.
"The decision is connected with personal circumstances. It's in no way connected with Sberbank's activities. Nobody pressured me regarding whether or not to be nominated to Sberbank's supervisory board," Guriev told Interfax when asked about the reasons behind his withdrawal.
Asked whether he plans to continue working on the supervisory boards of other companies, Guriev said: "That's a difficult question. I can't comment on such abstract questions."
Guriev currently occupies a seat on the board of directors of OJSC E.ON Russia , and he is on the list of candidates for reelection at the company's next shareholder meeting. He is also on the supervisory board of the Agency for Home Mortgage Lending (AHML), but he was not nominated for reelection.
Supervisory board members are to be elected at Sberbank's annual general shareholder meeting on May 31.
Besides Guriev, the candidate list for Sberbank's supervisory board contains another 18 people. Four of them are not on the current board: former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseyev, Director of the Expert Council at Rosgosstrakh and member of the supervisory board at Russian Agricultural Bank (RusAg) Ilya Lomakin-Rumyantsev, and Turkish economist and professor Egilmez Ahmet Mahfi.
The remaining 14 candidates are members of Sberbank's board of directors. One of them is Chairman of the Central Bank Sergei Ignatyev, who is expected to step down as chief in June. Elvira Nabiullina, who is poised to replace him, has declined to join Sberbank's supervisory board at this point.
Other candidates to the supervisory board are: First Deputy Chairmen of the Central Bank Alexei Ulyukayev and Georgy Luntovsky, Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Sergei Shvetsov, Director of the Central Bank's Consolidated Economic Department Nadezhda Ivanova, Sberbank's CEO German Gref, his deputy Bella Zlatkis, Rector of the Russian Presidential Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration Vladimir Mau, General Director of the Interfax Center for Economic Analysis Mikhail Matovnikov, Chairman of Italy's Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena S.p.A. Alessandro Profumo (he was elected as the former CEO of UniCredit and Gref's advisor last year), President of the Center for Strategic Research Foundation Mikhail Dmitriev, Rector of the All-Russia Academy of Foreign Trade of the Economic Development Ministry Sergei Sinelnikov-Murylev, former Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank and professor at the Russian Academy of Entrepreneurship Dmitry Tulin, and independent Sberbank consultant Ronald Freedman (last year he joined the board as a member of the board of directors of Troika Dialog ).
Two existing supervisory board members were left off the candidate list: the Central Bank's Chief Auditor Valery Tkachenko and Rair Simonyan, who was elected as chairman of the board of directors of LLC Morgan Stanley Bank and in November joined a group of strategic advisors to the president of Russian oil company Rosneft . The task of this group is to consolidate the oil company's financial assets and create a universal financial institution on their basis.