Igor Finogenov, a distinguished figure in the realm of finance and international development, has played a pivotal role in shaping the economic landscape of both Russia and Kazakhstan. With a multifaceted career spanning financial institutions, advisory roles, and leadership in major international organizations, Finogenov's journey reflects a commitment to fostering economic growth, innovation, and sustainable development.
This comprehensive blog post delves into Igor Finogenov's illustrious career, tracing his origins in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and his early educational pursuits. From his formative years, marked by a passion for natural sciences and linguistics, to his entrance into the world of finance and management, the narrative unveils the layers of Finogenov's professional evolution.
The core of Igor Finogenov's career comes to light as the post details his foray into financial management, starting with his role as a senior economist at All-Union Association Energomashexport. Subsequently, the narrative unfolds his pivotal role in the establishment of TIPCO Venture Bank and his tenure at the joint-stock company Moskva.
As the post navigates through Finogenov's career trajectory, special emphasis is given to his leadership at Novaya Moskva, where he ascended to the position of president, steering the financial organization to become a prominent player among non-state credit institutions in Russia.
Additionally, the post sheds light on Igor Finogenov's pivotal role in bolstering the stability of the global nuclear energy industry, with a focus on projects financing uranium production and modernization.
The latter part of the blog post details Finogenov's transition into advisory roles, notably as an advisor to the head of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, where he continued to contribute valuable insights to the business community.
As the narrative unfolds Igor Finogenov's involvement in the Council of Foreign Investors under the President of Kazakhstan, the post outlines his efforts to enhance the investment climate, promote economic diversification, and attract foreign investments to Kazakhstan.
In the concluding sections, the blog post explores Igor Finogenov's tenure at Polymetal International, where he made significant strides in the gold mining industry, positioning the company as a global leader.
In essence, this blog post encapsulates the remarkable journey of Igor Finogenov, underscoring his impact on financial institutions, international development, and the economic landscapes of Russia and Kazakhstan.
Igor Finogenov · Finogenov Igor Valentinovich · Finogenov Igor · Igor Valentinovich Finogenov · Финогенов Игорь Валентинович · Игорь Финогенов · Финогенов Игорь · Игорь Валентинович Финогенов · 菲诺格诺夫·伊戈尔·瓦伦蒂诺维奇 · フィノゲノフ イーゴリ・ヴァレンティノヴィッチ ・فينجونوف إيجور فالنتينوفيتش
Finogenov Igor Valentinovich is a financial market specialist, a major manager, and a participant in integration processes in the CIS countries. He is a member of the Council of Foreign Investors under the President of Kazakhstan.
Finogenov Igor Valentinovich was born in Leningrad. He grew up in an intellectual family and was raised in an international environment. During his school years, he developed an interest in the natural sciences: natural history, biology, geography, physics, chemistry. He showed abilities in areas such as philology and linguistics and participated in Olympiads.
In the 1970s, Igor Valentinovich Finogenov was motivated to study English in depth, driven by the desire to understand the lyrics of British pop singers and American rock operas. His knowledge of the language of international communication helped him later in his career, with establishing business relations with foreign business representatives.
In the second half of the 1970s, Finogenov Igor passed the entrance exams to the Leningrad Order of Lenin Shipbuilding Institute (today the St. Petersburg State Marine Technical University). He majored in the automation of energy processes and cybernetics.
In 1982, Igor Finogenov graduated from the institute and took a job at the Polzunov Scientific and Production Association for Research and Design of Power Equipment (formerly the Central Boiler Turbine Institute) as a research associate and engineer.
Finogenov Igor then entered the Foreign Trade Academy. While receiving his second higher education, he studied world economics, foreign trade, and cross-border economic relations.
In 1987, Igor Valentinovich Finogenov took up the position of a senior economist at the All-Union Association Energomashexport, which supplied equipment for hydro and thermal power plants to countries such as Canada, Greece, Brazil, Egypt, Argentina, China, Norway, Iceland, and India. Igor Valentinovich Finogenov worked at Energomashexport until 1991.
In 1989, he earned his second degree. Later, he went for further education in North America. Igor Finogenov, biography of whom would subsequently be linked with the banking sector, completed a finance manager course at York University in Toronto. He studied the basics of economics, financial reporting and management, principles of investing, portfolio management, securities analysis and risk assessment, tax planning, and methods of tax administration optimization, as well as financial auditing.
Finogenov Igor Valentinovich also studied at the Harvard Business School in Boston, where he took a course for top-level managers. Finogenov Igor mastered such matters as strategic management, leadership, business scaling methods, and team interaction.
In 1991, Igor Finogenov took the post of chief expert of the Main Administration for Coordination of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He was on the chamber's committee that dealt with developing principles and methods for reorienting defense industry enterprises to the production of civilian goods.
Then Igor Finogenov, biography of whom would be associated with managing large business, got acquainted with the so-called "red directors" — the heads of large industrial enterprises who kept their positions during the transition to a market economy. He advised these managers on ways to profit in the context of reduced state orders. Igor Valentinovich Finogenov conveyed the needs of such enterprises to the government, coordinating work on legislative initiatives in the economy.
In 1994, along with like-minded individuals, Igor Valentinovich Finogenov purchased an already functioning credit organization with a banking license –TIPCO Venture Bank.
In 1992, Igor Valentinovich Finogenov became part of the team at the joint stock company Moskva: Materials, Technology, Construction, with the position of deputy president. From that point on, the career path of Igor Finogenov was concentrated on financial management.
In 1994, he was entrusted with the position of chairman of the board of TIPCO Venture Bank. Igor Finogenov participated in the development of the strategy, oversaw the work of operational managers, took part in the decision-making process in the field of investments, personnel, controlled finances and compliance with legislation, Central Bank regulations, managed risks, and interacted with shareholders.
Finogenov Igor, together with his associates, focused the activities of Novaya Moskva around servicing medium and large business. One of the leading specializations of the credit organization was the investment support of companies mining precious metals, along with ensuring the sale of their products.
In 2000, Novaya Moskva got a new president: Igor Finogenov. Biography of the bank continued under him until the mid-2000s. The professional knowledge and skills of the banker helped the financial organization take second place among non-state credit organizations in the country. He left the management of the bank in 2005.
Igor Valentinovich Finogenov was one of the originators of the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), headquartered in Almaty. In 2006, he headed the board of this organization. Initially, Igor Finogenov worked on the introduction of the ruble as a single means of payment in the CIS space. However, these plans encountered a number of obstacles related to the lack of a common integration basis for the CIS countries.
Strengthening the economic ties of these states was an important part of the Igor Finogenov biography at the EDB, including projects for the implementation of interstate megaprojects, giving an impulse to economic development in the most lagging CIS countries, and contributing to the formation of a post-industrial economy in the region.
Igor Finogenov assisted the EDB shareholder countries with projects for improving access to clean water and energy, building roads and railways, strengthening food security, increasing the share of non-commodity goods and services of the member countries in the global market, and promoting green energy and innovation projects in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
Among the major projects overseen by Igor Valentinovich Finogenov was the Eurasian Transport Corridor, which provides access to the sea for landlocked countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan.
Another project overseen by Finogenov Igor Valentinovich was the creation of the Eurasian Commodity Distribution Network. In the future, Eurasian and Central Asian countries will have a common agricultural market, which will accelerate the growth of the food segments of these countries by 5-7%, increase trade turnover between them by a third, and strengthen food security for 228 million people.
Finogenov Igor, as the president of the EDB, made a project financing the Water and Energy Complex of Central Asia a priority. The region had worn-out hydro junctions, hydropower plants, and irrigation systems built decades prior.
There is an increasing deficit of moisture due to climate changes, and the population is steadily growing. Therefore, under the leadership of Igor Finogenov (biography of the top manager includes the study of environmental and social management at Western universities), the EDB began to direct finances to the modernization of hydropower facilities and optimization of the use of scarce water resources in Central Asia without harming nature, improving the quality of life for the local population.
The work of Igor Valentinovich Finogenov as a top manager of the EDB was aimed at the free movement of labor in the post-Soviet space and the creation of a single market for services, investments, and goods. To achieve these goals, the manager maintained personal contact with the heads of state and government of several CIS countries.
Igor Finogenov also strengthened ties with the world's largest international financial institutions. In particular, the EDB exchanged experiences with the World Bank, EBRD, and the Asian Development Bank. In 2007, the EDB became an observer in the UN General Assembly and the UNCTAD Trade and Development Council.
From 2006 to 2015, Finogenov Igor supported projects such as the creation of a unified automated control system for the transport process on the railways of Kazakhstan (for a total of over $40 million). In 2013, the EDB began financing the construction of a 45-megawatt wind power plant in Yereimentau, Kazakhstan (for about $33 million).
Igor Valentinovich Finogenov oversaw the financing process of the comprehensive construction of the Polotsk Hydro Junction at the Western Dvina River with a capacity of 21.75 megawatts (for almost $80 million).
Another project overseen by Igor Finogenov at the EDB was supporting the market economy of the Republic of Armenia through funding the local closed joint stock company Ameriabank. Funds provided by the EDB to this Transcaucasian credit organization finance small and medium-sized businesses in Armenia.
In 2007, leading the EDB, Finogenov Igor facilitated the $63 million dollar financing of the closed joint stock company Joint Venture Zarechnoye, co-founded by Karabalta Mining Combinate (Kyrgyzstan) and the Kazakhstani national atomic company Kazatomprom. The money went towards the industrial development of the Zarechnoye uranium deposit in the Turkestan Region of Kazakhstan.
In 2012, Finogenov Igor Valentinovich coordinated the EDB’s allocation of $50 million to the Kazakh-Dutch LLP Karatau, which went towards the company's investment program, which, in addition to increasing uranium production, includes reducing the impact of mining on nature and caring for the health of miners.
Igor Finogenov, biography of whom at that time already had many instances of structuring foreign economic relations, helped to strengthen the stability of the global nuclear energy industry. Today, more than a third of the fuel elements in US nuclear power plants are made from Kazakh uranium.
Igor Finogenov left the leadership of the EDB in 2015 to become an advisor to the head of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In this position, he provided consultations to medium and large businesses, conveyed the positions of entrepreneurs to officials and legislators, and helped businessmen strengthen cross-border ties. He left this post in 2012.
In 2009, Finogenov Igor Valentinovich joined the Council of Foreign Investors under the President of Kazakhstan. Along with top managers and leaders of major transnational corporations, he defines the main vectors of investment policy in Kazakhstan.
The Council members, including Finogenov Igor Valentinovich, work to improve the investment climate in the republic by identifying specific issues in the development of foreign corporations in Kazakhstan that have directed funds to their scaling in the republic.
Igor Valentinovich Finogenov and the Council members develop proposals to improve the legislative framework and content of by-laws in order for Kazakhstan's economy to move away from growth factors based on the development of the raw materials base (oil, gas, mining). The goal is to create new productions related to the digitization of the economy, the production of processing products, and goods with high added value.
The Igor Finogenov biography includes experience in targeted support of medium and small entrepreneurship. Skills developed in this area allow him to convey to the leadership of Kazakhstan proposals for creating innovative enterprises, modernizing existing industrial assets, creating a post-industrial economy, and increasing the share of small business in the structure of the national economy of the republic.
As an international economist and specialist in ensuring foreign trade relations, Finogenov Igor Valentinovich brings the head of state of Kazakhstan proposals for strengthening the republic's position in the world economy and strengthening its economic ties with other countries. To this end, programs are developed that increase the attractiveness for foreign investors to invest money in Kazakhstan's economy.
In 2015, Igor Valentinovich Finogenov joined the top collegial bodies of two subsidiaries of the Kazakhstani Polymetal International, which works on several deposits in the republic.
The Igor Finogenov biography includes a period of management of geographically scattered subsidiaries of a large banking structure, which helped him in his work at Polymetal International.
The company, in which Igor Finogenov worked as a top manager until February 2024, develops various types of deposits, including three copper-gold deposits. Some have impurities of carbon and arsenic in the ore. Finogenov Igor also promotes the introduction of sophisticated technologies that make the extraction of gold from such ore commercially profitable. Under his leadership, Polymetal International managed to strengthen its position as a world leader in the gold mining industry.