The biography of German Gref

Contents:

·        German Gref: family and early life

·        First career steps

·        German Gref in the government

·        Sberbank reforms

·        German Gref: personal life and hobbies

German Gref (born 8 February 1964) — is a former prominent government official, minister, and one of the leading reformers of the Russian economy. From 2007 to the present day, he has been the Chairman of the Management Board of Sberbank.

German Gref: family and early years

German Gref’s homeland is the village of Panfilovo in Pavlodar region, now – a settlement in Kazakhstan. He was born into a family of ethnic Germans who were forced to move to a remote region of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War. His father, Oskar died when his son was barely a year and a half old. Oskar designed Panfilovo’s electricity system in the post-war years and was therefore held in high regard by his fellow villagers.

Gref’s mother Emilia became the family’s breadwinner. She worked as an accountant in the village council and was the head of the women’s committee, so all the trouble connected with bringing up children fell on the grandmother’s shoulders. Despite the fact that the village was very small, there was a functioning school, where German Gref began his education. The Gref family moved to a town near Pavlodar. German started sixth grade there.

Teachers and classmates remember the head of Sberbank as a child very well. Even in junior school he was distinguished by his determination and genuine interest in knowledge. Gref’s brother and sister did well in school, but his yearning for independence got in the way of him finishing school with honors. He often argued with his teachers and was not afraid to defend his point of view. Not all teachers liked this, so Gref failed to graduate with honors.

After receiving his diploma in 1981, Gref applied to a university, but his first attempt ended in failure. He then spent a year working as a legal advisor in the local administration before joining the army. Gref served in the internal military, proved his worth and in 1982 his unit commanders sent him to study at the law department of F.M. Dostoevsky Omsk State University. In one of the interviews, Gref recalled that he never wanted to be a straight-A student, but in his third year, he suddenly discovered that he had only excellent grades on his report card.

German Gref graduated in 1990 and decided to pursue postgraduate studies. He did not plan to leave Omsk and worked as a teacher at his home university. During this period Sergey Baburin, at the time — a lecturer at Omsk State University and later a parliament member and well-known politician — had an influence on Gref’s biography. He helped Gref to be accepted to the Leningrad State University, where Anatoly Sobchak became his academic supervisor.

First career steps

After moving to Leningrad in 1990, German Gref immersed himself in political life. Almost immediately, he got a job as a legal advisor in the Petrodvorets administration. At the same time, he was writing his dissertation, but completed this work much later. The head of Sberbank received his PhD after defending his dissertation. His academic work focused on reforms in the economy.

In the early 1990s, Gref actively climbed the career ladder. In 1991, he moved to the St Petersburg mayor’s office, where he became head of the Property Committee of the Petrodvorets district. This was the time of the first reforms in the city’s economy. The administration was compiling the first property registers, making valuations of buildings, and Gref was actively involved in the process. In 1994, he assumed the position of Deputy Chairman of the Housing and Utilities Committee and began restructuring the housing and utilities system.

At the time, all the ideas could not be implemented. The head immediately raised the issue of de-monopolization of the urban economy and actively opposed the division of districts between utility service providers – a method used at the time. In 1997, already in the position of vice-governor and head of the Committee for State Property Management, he initiated an anti-monopoly audit of two utility giants, Lenenergo and Lengaz. At the same time, Gref was involved in the management of the St Petersburg Sea Port and the Channel 5 television company.

German Gref in the government

The next stage in the career of German Gref was the post of Deputy Minister of State Property in the Federal government. He was offered the post in 1998 and relocated to Moscow. Among Gref’s merits of this period is the first stage of the housing and utilities reform, but this time – at the federal level. The Deputy Minister actively encouraged the distribution of state contracts on a competitive basis and promoted the idea of residents’ right to choose their management company. It is no exaggeration to say that the current housing and utilities system is based on Gref’s ideas.

The turning point in the manager’s career was Putin’s instruction to devise a strategy for the country’s economic development over the next 10 years. The document was approved, and a separate ministry was created for economic reforms. German Gref became Minister of Economic Development and Trade in 2000, a position he held for the next seven years.

Gref now notes that the period of work for the government was the most difficult in his career. Each step of the reforms had to be defended with struggle at the hours-long meetings, and often there was not much left of his ideas when the final decisions were made. The creation of the Stabilization Fund, Russia’s joining the WTO, and the participation in the Winter Olympic Games bid are considered indisputable achievements of the MEDT head. The hard work wore the manager out and in 2007, during the convocation of government, he resigned and was appointed head of Sberbank.

Sberbank reforms

The management of the country’s largest bank gave a lukewarm reception to the new chairman of the board. The financial institution managed to retain assets and increase the number of branches even during the crisis, and therefore the board of shareholders saw no need for reforms. At Sberbank, Gref has set the goal of completely reforming technological operations. The restructuring of the lending policy as well as the opening of the “Loan Factory” made it possible to attract new clients and increase the bank’s operating profit.

Thanks to the updated platform, visits to branches were replaced by online banking, and most services became available online. The digital transformation in the late 2000s became the basis for further development of Sberbank, which soon far surpassed private lending institutions in terms of service development. In 2017, the bank changed its development trajectory and became a major fintech company with an extensive ecosystem.

The press regularly publishes import substitution ideas authored by German Gref. The latest news about the head of Sberbank appeared in the online media in early autumn 2022. The chairman suggested that the government should develop special support measures in the form of grants for projects in the high-tech sector.

German Gref: personal life and hobbies

The head of Sberbank is married and in his second marriage is raising three children. Gref’s wife, designer Yana Golovina, met her husband in Moscow. Together they founded the Khoroshkola gymnasium, an experimental education model, where Gref’s children attend, and where his granddaughter attends the kindergarten of the institution.

The executive keeps himself in great shape and devotes at least an hour and a half a day to physical exercise. His favorite exercise is jogging.