Moscow: Banking&Investment Congress

The Banking&Investment Congress organized by IM Events (Impress Media Holding) took place in Moscow on January 29, 2010. GVA Sawyer’s representatives participated in the Congress: Vera Setskaya, President of GVA Sawyer, took part in the Congress as a speaker. Evelina Pavlovskaya, Vice President for Consulting also participated in the event.

Event format – conference.

Audience: Russian and foreign banks, investment funds, development and management companies, appraisal and legal companies, consulting agencies.

The program included the following major topics:

Investment market overview

Speakers: Charles Boudet, Managing Director (Jones Lang LaSalle Russia) and Olga Arkhangelskaya, Head of Real Estate Consulting Department (Ernst & Young)

Banks’ standpoint

The major topic of discussion was «Solving problematic and disputable issues when a bank finds the report’s quality insufficient» (speaker: Alexander Baktimirov, Head of the Collateral Management Department, OAO "Alfa-Bank")

The major items of the discussion were:

• Are there any integral appraisal models for the collateral assets?
• What types of appraisal were applied in the past and what types are applied now by different banks?
• What assets are the most problematic now?
• What approaches are applied by banks in selling of problem assets?

Developers’ standpoint

Vera Setskaya, President of GVA Sawyer, made a speech on the topic: «Developers’ and consultants’ technical support to banks and development companies in evaluating and selling of collateral assets.”

The following issues were raised during the discussion:

• Consulting services: banks’ and developers’ point of view
• Advantages and disadvantages of using outsourced consultants and management companies for managing the banks’ collateral assets
• Is it worthwhile to create internal banking structures for managing problem assets?
• The role of the development companies left on the market: would they turn into contractors and consultants offering property management services to banks?

There was a lively discussion of all the issues raised at the conference.

Today the banks are actively being included in share capital of development companies - banks’ debtors. This process might result in the global change of the real estate market, when the major market players would be investment structures established by banks and not purely development companies. These and other questions were in the main focus of the conference.