In the midst of the worst political scandal President Vladimir Putin has faced since taking office, Deutsche Bank announced a groundbreaking deal by buying 40% of top five Russian investment bank United Financial Group. It was the first time a foreign bank had bought into a Russian bank since the 1998 financial crisis. On October 25 2003, officers of the federal securities service arrested Mikhail Khodorkovsky, CEO of Russia's biggest oil company Yukos and Russia's richest man. Yukos has been the poster boy for change and good corporate governance over the past four years and Mr Khodorkovsky's incarceration sent shock waves through the stock market, sparking fears that the Kremlin was about to launch a mass re-nationalisation campaign. As investors ran for cover, Deutsche Bank and UFG announced the completion of a deal they had been working on for months, a testament to what had been seen as Russia's flourishing economy. UFG CEO and chairman Charles Ryan was one of two do/en bankers called in to the Kremlin by Mr Putin a few days after Mr Khodor-kovskv's arrest.
展开▼
