Ruben Vardanyan
Principles:
- Help the successful become more successful
- Instruct those capable of development and developing the country and world
Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO
This is a long-term educational project with lasting impact, which is aimed at creating a new intellectual and business elite in Russia. Involvement in the project of completely different people and companies, including beyond Russia, allows for solving another fundamental task – expanding the circle of trust in society. All who united around the SKOLKOVO project believed it was important and possible to create a business school capable of standing with the world leaders of business education and developing its own method of training the leaders of change, able to work in circumstances of transformation. While considerable work lies ahead, SKOLKOVO is now the benchmark of quality for similar initiatives and us. Successful implementation of the project, which bordered on impossible, has allowed for quelling general skepticism.
Founded in 2006, Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO is Russia’s largest private business school and a joint project of Russian and international business representatives combining their efforts to create a school of the new generation. The business school’s founders are 18 major Russian and foreign companies and individuals.
Goals
- Become the foundation of business education in Russia and a solid alternative to Western business schools
- Give to the country managers of the new generation capable of heading and leading Russian companies in the modern economic circumstances
- Become an expert platform for solving the tasks of big business and a center of expertise for those placing their bets on Russia and other emerging markets.
Project milestones
- The school began operating in pilot mode in the fall of 2007.
- Initial selection for the Executive MBA program occurred in the fall of 2008.
- Constructed by September 2009 was the entire building complex of the school campus.
- In June 2010 the first alumni of SKOLKOVO school received their diplomas.
- As of today the school already generates an operating profit, with revenue totaling $60-70 mln.
- The project’s success horizon – 20-25 years.
Total capital expenditures for the project – $250 mln (funds of the project’s donors).
Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO. Partners.
Anatoly Chubais
Alexander Voloshin
Andrey Rappoport
Sergey Popov
Konstantin Nikolaev
Leonid Mikhelson
Leonid Melamed
Valentin Zavadnikov
Roman Abramovich
Alexander Abramov
Russian Standard Corporation
Itera
Severstal
GUM Trading House
Troika Dialog Group
TNK-BP
Credit Suisse
SUN Group
Interviews and other materials
Ruben Vardanyan
Ruben Vardanyan
Ruben Vardanyan: Live as if you were going to die tomorrow
21.11.2016
The impact investor and social entrepreneur spoke to TASS about what type of threat the coming demographic crisis poses to Russia, how the future will be about social capitalism and why social and educational projects are so important.
Ruben Vardanyan
Ruben Vardanyan Changes The World One Country At A Time
Forbes, 11.10.2016
I got one hour with Mr. Vardayan, and wrote as much as I could. He quickly ran me through some of his most proud professional achievements.
Ruben Vardanyan
Key challenges of the XXI century – people and education
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, USA, 06.02.2014
Ruben Vardanyan
Ruben Vardanyan
“The U.S. also has roaches, only fewer than we have” – Ruben Vardanyan, investor, advisor to the CEO of Sberbank of Russia
Vedomosti (Internet version), 29.04.2014
Redistribution of property in Russia is an inevitable process, since major companies cannot remain ineffective forever, cautions Ruben Vardanyan.
Working on Ruben Vardanyan’s latest interview proved in many ways unusual. For example, we met twice. And whereas during the first meeting the suggestion to “discuss the international situation” was seen as a rather funny joke, subsequently the political situation began to change so quickly that we could hardly manage without this discussion.
Vardanyan told Vedomosti how he chooses investment projects, how international investors see the situation in Russia and which fundamental changes the country has long needed. “I think that Russian business in the near future awaits quite a lot of bankruptcies and restructurings, since you cannot eternally inject money into companies bordering on demise and support the owners”, Vardanyan said. Sooner or later we must switch from the model of rescuing owners to the model of rescuing business. This fundamental change must finally happen”. Redistribution of property in Russia is an inevitable process, since major companies cannot remain ineffective forever, including in Russia, Vardanyan cautions.
Ruben Vardanyan
The idea of working shifts is awful
Vedomosti (Internet version), 07.03.2013
Why Russian entrepreneurs are good at creating one-off financial projects but not at producing consistent, global businesses.
Ruben Vardanyan headed Troika Dialog for twenty years. Last year the brand ceased to exist. In less than a year, Mr. Vardanyan will say goodbye to the investment business. In this interview with Vedomosti, he talks about what partnership with Sberbank has brought to the former Troika, his personal investments and plans to change the approach to philanthropy in Russia.
Ruben Vardanyan
SKOLKOVO has some problems, but this is normal for any growing organism
Moskovskie Novosti, 02.08.2012
Ruben Vardanyan on the ideal SKOLKOVO graduates, the business school’s prospects and the reasons for the Moscow protests
President of Troika Dialog Investment Company and one of the founders of SKOLKOVO business school, Ruben Vardanyan, explains to MN the source of the rumors regarding SKOLKOVO’s merger with the New Economic School (NES), whom he considers the business school’s ideal graduates, and why Moscow’s middle class has started to protest.
Ruben Vardanyan
We are going to face either reformation or revolution or inquisition
Mediamax, 06.02.2012
In late January, Russian newspapers wrote that “Troika Dialog” “doesn’t exist anymore” meaning that after closing the deal of selling the company to Sberbank there will be no “Troika” brand any longer. You said in your interview to the “Vedomosti” that “there is no point in preserving the brand: if we want to develop the services of Sberbank Group it will be more proper to be called Sberbank”. Don’t you have any emotions on this occasion? For the brand you have been establishing since 1991 heading the first investment bank in the Soviet Union stops existing.
Ruben Vardanyan
You can fool anyone you want, but you can’t fool yourself
BOSCOMAGAZINE, 28.03.2011
In their home country, Russian businessmen are scolded rather than loved: “They could learn a thing or two.” What this means, of course, is learning to earn money: do it quicker and easier. Ruben Vardanyan, of course, can tell you how to earn money, forecast risks and valuate deals. But he can tell you even more about how to be a person. Some will tell you that being a person is the simplest thing of all. But go ahead and try. All I can say is that Ruben Vardanyan does it well.
Ruben Vardanyan
The crisis showed we have no capitalism
Vedomosti, 30.09.2010
The strengthening of the government’s role in the economy led to a regrettable result: some businessmen resemble Soviet factory directors, profiting off the government by shifting expenses to the latter while leaving the profits for themselves, with everyone else deprived of access to the officials’ offices and left searching for options, according to Vardanyan. He has headed Troika Dialog for nearly 20 years, but intends to leave and sell his stake in the company. Mr. Vardanyan spoke with Vedomosti about preparations for the eventual split.
Ruben Vardanyan
The 21st century — The Time of People
Imperial magazine, 18.06.2010
The CEO of Troika Dialog admits he doesn’t possess musical or artistic talents. The only thing he knows how to do inside and out is to create business and oversee ambitious projects with an aim for the future.
Ruben Vardanyan
Soapbox: gulf between teaching and reality
Financial Times blog, 18.11.2009
The world has changed dramatically and continues to change rapidly.
In this new reality the traditional business school format, based on the western template, no longer provides the level of knowledge and quality of education necessary for students and which employers demand.
In this new reality the traditional business school format, based on the western template, no longer provides the level of knowledge and quality of education necessary for students and which employers demand.
Ruben Vardanyan
The Promising Continent
The Moscow Times.com, 23.11.2009
Last month I visited the 13th Africa Forum in Cape Town, organized by Troika Dialog’s strategic partner Standard Bank. Talking with delegates, I was struck once again by the sheer scale of opportunity that exists in Africa for Russian business, just as Russia becomes an increasingly attractive market for African products.
Ruben Vardanyan
Russia’s lessons in capitalism, Moscow vision, MBA
The Times, 20.10.2008
Oligarchs are funding an innovative new college, reports Des Dearlove
Nestled in extensive grounds to the southwest of the Russian capital, the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO is yet another sign of Russia’s growing confidence. Founded in 2006, it boasts a Who’s Who of Russian oligarchs on its board. This autumn the new school will start taking MBA applications and it will welcome its inaugural MBA class next year.
Ruben Vardanyan
It’s a tough situation right now; everything and everywhere must change at once
Slon.ru, 23.12.2014
The former CEO of Troika Dialog, founder of Skolkovo Business School and partner of investment company Vardanyan, Broitman and Partners speaks about new projects, the logic of current events and prospects.
Ruben Vardanyan scheduled the interview for eight in the morning. He says that he usually works from eight in the morning until eleven at night. Apparently, following the sale of Troika Dialog (in October 2011) and departure from the business of Sberbank CIB (in August 2013), Vardanyan’s work has scarcely slowed down.
An entrepreneur and philanthropist, Ruben Vardanyan dislikes speaking about politics and the economy, which is today inseparably tied to politics. This is not only because he is generally very cautious in his statements: he is truly much more interested by what he directly engages in and is able to impact himself.
Ruben Vardanyan
Ruben Vardanyan, former Troika Dialog CEO: a grumbling optimist
Financial Times, 14.01.2015
For a man once called the poster boy of Russian capitalism, Ruben Vardanyan is remarkably relaxed about the crisis erupting around him. Sitting in his office in one of Moscow’s premier office complexes, which he also owns, surrounded by deal trophies and other symbols of his success, Mr Vardanian’s response to the rouble’s collapse and the slide towards recession is typically Russian: it has been worse.
“It’s all relative,” he says, before counting off a list of Russian economic crises of the past quarter century since the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Looking back for 25 years being in this country I can tell you, there are always challenges.”
Ruben Vardanyan
Patch Adams and His Clowns Bring Health and Humor to Armenia
The Moscow Times, 28.05.2015
YEREVAN – One Russian philanthropist has just completed the trial run of a unique investment vehicle: a bus filled with clowns.
Ruben Vardanyan, founder of investment bank Troika Dialog, sponsored a visit to Armenia by clown doctor Patch Adams and 20 clowns from around the world this past week. They were joined by Maria Yeliseyeva, founder of Russian children's charity Maria's Children, who added 10 clown participants to the colorful delegation. Yeliseyeva introduced Patch, with whom she has been working on clown trips in Russia for the last 30 years, to Vardanyan at a charity event in November.
Magazines / Books
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