Dubai: Russian corporates looking to gain a foothold in the Gulf market and access to capital, and Gulf investors looking to tap opportunities in key econ-omic sectors in Russia will now be able to draw upon the presence of Russia's second largest bank in Dubai.
VTB Capital is the investment bank linked to VTB Group, Russia's second largest bank, and officially began operating from the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) yesterday.
According to Yuri Soloviev, president and global chief executive officer of VTB Capital, the opportunities for cooperation in utilities, energy and power generation, as well as more diverse sectors such as hospitality, real estate, infrastructure and logistics, can be mutually beneficial.
"Russia can definitely benefit from the experience and technology the Gulf corporates enjoy. And Russian corporates can come here and provide the technology in the areas where the Gulf companies might not have tremendous expertise or experience, such as nuclear power stations, railways and maybe some other sectors," Soloviev told Gulf News.
"We see ourselves as focused on interests of Russian corporates outside Russia."
The global economic and financial downturn has significantly slowed down mergers and acquisitions, and other corporate activities amid tightening credit conditions and a sharp decline in confidence in equity markets.
Some signs of returning confidence and investor interest, and easing of liquidity in capital markets are now growing. The bank is expecting to announce its first regional transactions in the second half of this year.
"The product line we are developing is fairly comprehensive. In the capital markets space we are looking at arranging Islamic financing and to become the first sukuk issuer in Russian products," said Herbert Moos, chief executive of VTB Capital for the Middle East region.
"For infrastructure projects, we are looking to develop or build on a number of acquisition opportunities," he said.
"We are reflecting on the new multi-polar world economic environment, where you have new and deep pools of capital in Asia and the Middle East. Dubai is just the beginning, but we will be focused on all the Gulf states." The business relationship between Russia and the GCC has become of key strategic importance in recent years.
"It is not a secret that there are a lot of Russian people handling their businesses in the Middle East but if we look through their profile we will find out that they are small or a middle class [sic] businessmen that arrived in the MENA region at the right time and made good money on that.
"However now the Middle East is becoming more and more attractive for investors in general and for Russians in particular," says Dmitry Krasnogor, director at Eventica in Dubai.
