Two leading Russian investment banks, Troika Dialog and Trust Investment Bank, have both completed management buy-outs.
Both are designed to cut loose oligarch shareholders " it is undesirable to have links with them since Yukos was broken up.
For Trust Investment Bank, its MBO had a simple objective " distance the bank from Menatep, its former owner and the current target of a Kremlin legal assault.
Menatep, whose principal shareholders are the jailed Mikhail Khordorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, previously owned 99.3% of the bank. However, as of November, five senior managers own 80%, with 15 other managers owning smaller stakes.
Illya Yurov, the bank's founder and chairman, owns a slightly larger stake than the other managers. He says: "There was a certain level of frustration among clients when 70% of our equity was owned by people under criminal charges. Clients were afraid the whole operation would go bust."
Yurov admits the...
