Third Senior Banker Leaves Troika Dialog Brokerage

WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE

By JASON CORCORAN in Moscow

July 17, 2009

The head of sales at Troika Dialog has become the third senior banker at the Russian brokerage to step down in less than three months.

Gerrit Heyns, who has stepped down from his position after joining Troika in 2002, follows the resignation of the firm's chief executive for the U.K. division, Howard Snell, and the departure of Giedrius Pukas, the managing director of Troika Capital Partners in late May.

A Troika Dialog spokeswoman said Mr. Heyns hadn't left the firm and would be retained in some capacity. "Gerrit has gone on a kind of academic leave," she said. "There's no arrangement yet. He has gone away to think about his future but he is still with Troika."

Troika Dialog entered a strategic alliance with South African bank Standard Bank in March after selling a 33% stake in itself for $200 million and is reorganizing its business lines to integrate it with the Standard's Moscow-based operations.

Mr. Heyns, who is one of the senior partners at Troika, is one of the most experienced and well-known bankers in Moscow.

Prior to joining Troika, he helped to establish the equity business of Kleinwort Benson in Asia as its first head of equity sales in Hong Kong. He later joined Lehman Brothers to establish and manage an institutional equity sales team as its head of sales and went on from there to be head of sales for J.P. Morgan Securities.

He began in the equity broking business in Bangkok as a salesman and then head of sales with Crosby Securities, which later became SocGen Securities Asia.

He couldn't be reached for comment.

Russian banks are hiring in numbers as domestic corporates queue up to issue new debt. After a 10-month break, the euro-bond market has been pried open for Russian issuers by OAO Gazprom and Russian Agricultural Bank, which recently raised a combined $3.25 billion on it.