Banker Kim Seeks Foreign Assets

Moscow Times 22 May 2013
Igor Kim snapped up cast-off assets from foreign banks pulling out of Russia, and now the banker says he wants to expand into Europe.
Kim, 47, emerged with his partners as an asset consolidator after the global crash of 2008 forced Western banks to downsize, buying the Russian commercial banking units of Barclays, WestLB, Morgan Stanley and Santander.
“We are looking at different assets, including in Central and Eastern Europe,” Kim said in an interview this week.
“I don’t buy minority stakes. To meet professional challenges and ambitions, controlling stakes are interesting.”
Kim bought Expobank from Barclays for less than book value in 2011, and it now has opened a unit in Latvia, a European Union member state that attracted increasing Russian financial flows as Cyprus, a favored offshore haven, teetered.
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