Kirill Dmitriev

Early life

Kirill Dmitriev was born in 1975 in Kiev, Ukraine. He holds a BA in economics with honors and distinction from Stanford University and an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker scholar.

Career

Dmitriev worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in New York and a consultant at McKinsey & Company in Los Angeles, Moscow, and Prague, before returning to Russia in 2000. He was an associate at private equity fund Delta Private Equity Partners from 2002 to 2007, while also working for The U.S. Russia Investment Fund. He served as the President of Icon Private Equity from 2007 to 2010.

During his career, Dmitriev worked on the sale of DeltaBank to General Electric, DeltaCredit Bank to Société Générale, CTC Media shares to Fidelity Investments, National Cable Networks to Basic Element, CompuLink to three investment funds, TV3 to Prof-Media, and NTC to Bank Rossiya.

Russian Direct Investment Fund

In 2011 he was appointed as CEO of a newly created Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a sovereign wealth fund to make equity co-investments in Russia companies. His mission has been described as "to change the face of Russian capitalism" and make the Russian economy less dependent on the petroleum industry by "overcoming western funds’ reluctance to invest in a country many viewed as corrupt, prone to state meddling and plagued by a law-of-the-jungle legal system".

Under his leadership, RDIF has invested more than RUB 85 billion and over RUB 765 billion from co-investors including the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Italy, France. Foreign partners have included BlackRock, One Equity Partners, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank, Baring Vostok, UFG, Titan International and others.

Other activities

The World Economic Forum selected Dmitriev to be a Young Global Leader, and he was elected as a Vice President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP). In 2011 he was the only Russian national to be named one of 100 most influential private equity professionals of the decade by Private Equity International magazine.

Kirill Dmitriev was Chairman of the B20s Investments and Infrastructure Taskforce during the year of the Russian presidency in G20. In November 2012 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Investment Council under the Chairman of the State Duma.

He serves on the Board of Directors of Rostelecom, MDMG, Gazprombank, the Russian Railways, Transneft, and the supervisory board of ALROSA. He is also on the boards of trustees of the Mariinsky Theatre and Moscow State University. He was Chairman of the Russian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association from 2005 to 2006.

Five rules for survival

In November 2008, Dmitriev published an essay entitled, "Crisis: five rules for survival”, in the leading Russian business daily Vedomosti, the sister paper of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, in which he warned that the financial crisis of 2007–08 crisis would be prolonged.

Awards

By the decree of the President of the Russian Federation, Mr. Dmitriev has been awarded the Order of Alexander Nevsky for his valuable contribution to international investment projects and the socio-economic development of Russia.