Q&A with Richard Evans, Chairman of Samruk Holdings: “Our mandate is to make two and two add up to more than four”
A BROAD CAROLINAS accent drawls out across the conference rooms of the Radisson Hotel in Kazakhstan’s new capital, Astana. The American is teaching the basics of corporate governance to a seminar of youthful managers at Kazakhstan’s just-born $40 billion state holding company, Samruk. Some are so young they have acne. "Guys, this part is important!"
The lecturer is a bald late-career consultant from Ernst & Young, doing his bit for post-Soviet reform and, doubtless, per his generous fee for this hardship post, his retirement fund. His frustrated southern twangs are translated into Russian, still the lingua franca here despite 17 years of Kazakh-led independence, and a reminder that Moscow’s powerful bear still lingers covetously in the background here. "There are internal...
