Kudrin presents Pankin as new Financial Markets Service chief
MOSCOW. April 11 (Interfax) - Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has presented his former deputy Dmitry Pankin as the new head of the Federal Financial Markets Service (FFMS).
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed the necessary order for this on April 11.
An order was also signed to relieve Vladimir Milovidov from this position.
Milovidov bade farewell to this colleagues at the FFMS on April 7. He has yet to comment on his future employment plans. However, he recently started overseeing the international finances department at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). In addition, media reports have said Milovidov might become a vice president at Rosneft .
Kudrin said while presenting Milovidov that the FFMS was in the process of being merged with the Federal Insurance Market Oversight Service. "We're looking at a new FFMS structure and its new tasks in the context of the international financial center's creation and a new streamlined financial markets regulation vertical," Kudrin said.
Kudrin said the Finance Ministry would now regulate all the financial markets. He said the ministry would draft banking activity and insurance oversight legislation in conjunction with the FFMS, but that some of the regulatory work would be left to the FFMS.
"We now get two regulators the Central Bank and FFMS - from three. The FFMS role is growing in connection with this, we have been aiming for this, and Vladimir Dmitrievich [Milovidov] has backed this position," Kudrin said.
There were questions about where to draw the line in regulatory acts right until the last, but this should be rounded off soon and "on the whole we don't have any conceptual disagreements." "It follows from the presidential decree that regulatory and legal acts are for the Finance Ministry and the FFMS, and the government will have to compromise on this," Kudrin said.
The Russian president signed a decree to transfer insurance market oversight to the FFMS at the beginning of March.
Vladimir Milovidov replaced Oleg Vyugin as FFMS chief in May 2007. Rumors that he might quit surfaced in the second half of last year, when government agencies started to discuss reforming financial markets regulation. Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Savatyugin, Anna Popova, deputy head of the government staff, Sergei Barsyukov, head of the Finance Ministry's Financial Markets Department, Vladislav Reznik, chairman of the State Duma's Financial Market Committee and Andrei Sharonov, a former economic development minister who has become deputy mayor or Moscow, were named as possible replacements.
Dmitry Pankin, 54, hails from St Petersburg. He chaired the St Petersburg Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 1994-1999 and 2000-2003. He was head of department at the old electricity monopoly, RAO UES of Russia, from August 1999 to July 2000. He became deputy head if the Finance Ministry's Department for International Financial Relations, State Debt and State Financial Assets, in June 2004, and head of the department in 2005. Pankin became a deputy finance minister in January 2008 where his responsibilities included the placement of sovereign Eurobonds.