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two years, which in one form or another limited access to foreign capital markets and technologies. This fact, Aho admitted, was well known to him and taken into account, but in those areas to which the sanctions did not apply, it was possible to work calmly without any violations of the sanctions regime. “Not all ties with Russia should be cut off because of sanctions,” the former Finnish prime minister said three years ago.
The beginning of the "special operation" forced the Finnish politician to change his mind. “He is considered to have retired from the Supervisory Board from February 24, 2022 on a personal statement,” the note on the company’s website emphasised (the page has now been deleted).
Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi stepped down from the board of directors of Delimobil, where he stayed for only about six months. With him, the car sharing service was preparing for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, but eventually postponed the listing due to “poor demand” for securities.
“He [Matteo] is my personal friend and has many competencies in smart mobility city,” Vincenzo Trani, the founder of Delimobil, told Interfax. “For us, the reason why he left the council is absolutely clear: he wanted freedom of action, freedom to express his opinion without being tied to Delimobil. I was not against it, so we agreed that he was leaving.” Renzi himself did not comment on his departure.
The exodus of foreign representatives was not limited to European politicians. All foreigners left the Supervisory Board of Sberbank. In addition to Esko Aho, these are independent investment consultant Nadia Wells and former partner of Capital Group, investment expert and ESG Natalie Braginski-Munier. The largest state-owned bank in the country also left the former first deputy chairman of the board, Lev Khasis, who was supposed to head the e-commerce holding Sbera, and the technical director of the group, David Rafalovsky (both US citizens).
A real exodus occurred in the board of directors and management of VK. First of all, six foreigners also left the company. Jaco van der Merwe, Charles Searle and Mark Remon Soror resigned from the board on March 4, all representing one of the group's shareholders, the South African Naspers, on VK. Two more independent directors, Yang Bune and Sang Hoon Kim, left their posts on March 7. The Englishman Matthew Hammond, who in the group since 2010 held the positions of managing director and financial director, left the company after them. And in May, VK was also left by one of the founders of the group, Dmitry Grishin, who has been engaged in venture investments abroad for the last ten years (the headquarters of his investment company Grishin Robotics is located in the United States). The departure of foreigners in the group was compensated by Russian personnel.
Yandex also suffered losses. Two members of the board of directors left the company. They were Wellville founder Esther Dyson, one of the first Yandex investors, an evangelist for investments in the Russian IT industry and a member of the Yandex board of directors since 2006. “They [the Russian authorities] just made it easy for themselves to pull the strings when they needed to,” Dyson told The New York Times after leaving Yandex. “Gradually it
32 RUSSIA Country Report September 2022 www.intellinews.com