Sergei Nikolayevich Gorkov (also tr. Sergey; ; born 1 December 1968) is a Russian banker and attorney. Currently, he serves as chairman of Vnesheconombank (VEB), a major Russian state-owned bank. Previously, between 2010 and 2016, he was the deputy chairman of Sberbank, Russia's largest bank.
He is a graduate of the Academy of the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service, which prepares members for the Foreign Intelligence Service and Federal Security Service (FSB), and holds a master's degree in economics.
Early life and education
Gorkov was born in Gai, Orenburg Oblast, Soviet Russia, in 1968, to Nikolai Gorkov and Lyubov Gorkova. He has an older brother, Alexei Gorkov (born 1963), who joined the VEB board of directors in January 2017, and a younger sister, Antonina Konoplya (born 1971). In 1994, Sergei graduated with a law degree from the Academy of the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service, which prepares members for the Foreign Intelligence Service and Federal Security Service (FSB). In 2002, he earned a master's degree in economics at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. He speaks Russian, English and Arabic.
Career
Early career and Yukos
Gorkov later worked with Bank Menatep (1994–1997) before joining the Yukos oil company and Yukos Moscow (1997–2005), all of which are now defunct. He was a vice president at Yukos, where he oversaw personnel and pensions. He was also engaged in a social outreach program, Yukos' own youth movement called "New Civilization" (). The movement, which was extremely costly, had a mission to change Russia, and involved summer camps and young people engaging in the political system with their own party and parliament.
In 2003, Yukos began to collapse under a massive tax scandal amid lawsuits against the Russian government. Forbes stated it was a large mystery how Gorkov managed to avoid arrest, but inside sources (including Pavel Ivlev) stated it was through his connections with the Kremlin and the FSB. Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an enemy of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, was imprisoned for eight years for fraud and tax evasion, a conviction that drew skepticism in the West. Gorkov's subordinate, Alexei Kurtsin, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for embezzlement and served eight.
In 2005, after the Yukos fiasco, Gorkov moved to London, where he worked with several companies. He sat on the board of directors for Eton Energy Ltd. and for liquor company New Muscovy Company Ltd. Gorkov returned to Russia in 2006. From 2005 to 2008, he sat on the board of directors of FESCO Transport Group, Russia's largest intermodal transport operator.
Sberbank
Gorkov moved into the banking sector in November 2008, when he joined the state-owned Sberbank as director of personnel. During the recession, Gorkov oversaw an overhaul of the workforce, reducing the number of employees from 270,000 to 240,000 to increase efficiency and profit. He also led a retraining program, with 200,000 of the employees receiving some form of retraining, and introduced an employee evaluation system that led to monthly bonuses for the best employees.
Gorkov was tremendously successful during his first five years at Sberbank; Gorkov was appointed deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank in October 2010. He was promoted to run its international operations division and helped it expand its business reach from two countries to 20. Its international expansion included acquisitions of Volksbank of Austria and DenizBank of Turkey. Starting in October 2012, Gorkov was chairman of Sberbank's division in Kazakhstan.
VEB
In February 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin promoted Gorkov to chairman of Vnesheconombank (VEB), succeeding Vladimir Dmitriev. According to Russian sources, Gorkov's connection to the FSB played a part in his appointment to lead VEB; Putin, the former director of the FSB, has appointed several of its members to important roles in Russian government. Founded in 1922, Vnesheconombank is one of the oldest banks in Russia, but was acquired as a state development bank in 2007. During the financial crisis of 2007–08, Vnesheconombank's status as a state-owned bank forced it to assist the government with the domestic economy. It reorganized struggling banks, purchased two steel companies, bought 175 billion rubles (approximately $3 billion) of sagging shares of Russian companies to keep them afloat, and also heavily invested in struggling Ukrainian banks.