Jim West hopes to make a pile of money helping Americans invest in Russian securities without facing the headaches of buying shares in Russia.
But it's his relish for Russian headaches that he hopes will make his tiny Los Angeles-based investment firm, Score Corp., a leader in helping Russian firms issue American depositary receipts, or ADRs, the financial equivalent of bringing the mountain to Mohammed.
It was Score, not some large investment bank, that recently helped AvtoVAZbank, a regional bank in central Russia, put together the first application by a Russian company to issue ADRs, which are securities traded in the United States but backed by foreign stock.
The AvtoVAZbank application still faces a tough road to approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, but West is optimistic.
He believes hundreds of companies will follow suit in the next decade to bypass the country's murky stock market and the problems with registration and liquidity that buying shares in Russia entails.
When they do, he said, he will be there, helping organize ADR issues and collecting fees in the form of stock in the issuer companies, which he called drastically undervalued.
"I'm going to make a lot of money," he said.
West, who arrived at an interview in Moscow on foot and by trolley-bus, has been exploring Russia's emerging market since 1990.
Back then, he teamed up with the All-Russian Institute of Computerized Tomography to sell CAT-scan equipment to the Russian regions of Buryatia and Udmurtia -- "medicine was hot back then," he said -- and worked with Gorky Studios to market new films of 25 Slavic fairy tales.
Then he hit on the ADR idea and began traveling the country, hanging out with factory managers and calming their suspicion of foreign investors by proving that he was a real man, a muzhik.
He went hunting at dawn at what some executives in Ulyanovsk called "the dacha," which turned out to be "their cars, sitting next to the Volga River," and on another trip "swam in the icy Volga" with other Russian executives.
With his muzhik credentials in order, West said he is in an ideal position to act as matchmaker between Russian firms and the U.S. financial institutions whose help they need, and to compete with other investment banks.
"It's pretty hard," he said, "to get your typical investment-bank guy to go out to Domodedovo airport and think of a way to fight your way onto a plane with a seat that reclines -- I mean, it won't sit up straight -- and then cram 8 people into a Zhiguli and the guy's driving 160 kilometers an hour in the snow."
That's what West said he did with a well-dressed delegation from the Bank of New York and the law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy to meet AvtoVAZbank's directors in Togliatti, in the central Volga region.
"It was their first experience on Aeroflot, with the cover on the overhead light flipping back and forth," West said. "They were running around taking pictures of the plane.
"Then we took them out on the Volga in a yacht to show them there's a lot more to Russia than just misery."
The lawyers ended up handling AvtoVAZbank's ADR application and the bank has pledged to issue the securities, West said. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is still reviewing the application.
West has nothing but praise for Russian business people.
"Their suits are old, their ties aren't Gucci ties, but they get things done," he said.
But, he said, they do not know their own strength.
"They can't believe you can sell Russian shares on the U.S. stock market -- they think it's too good to be true," he said. "They ask, 'Why would people in the West want to buy Russian shares?'"
He said that besides AvtoVAZbank, two others are planning to apply for ADR issues: Baltica Bank and AvtoVAZ.
Meanwhile, he can't wait to get back on the road.
"You drive six hours to get there, the guy was four hours late, showed no interest at all even though it was all planned in advance," he said of a recent trip to the KamAZ truck works in Tatarstan.
"Then we had to drive six hours back -- and there's no McDonald's or Wendy's on the road," he said. "But you're driving along in the guy's Lada, and it's making its way through the snow, up and down hills, and suddenly you get to something really beautiful."
But it's his relish for Russian headaches that he hopes will make his tiny Los Angeles-based investment firm, Score Corp., a leader in helping Russian firms issue American depositary receipts, or ADRs, the financial equivalent of bringing the mountain to Mohammed.
It was Score, not some large investment bank, that recently helped AvtoVAZbank, a regional bank in central Russia, put together the first application by a Russian company to issue ADRs, which are securities traded in the United States but backed by foreign stock.
The AvtoVAZbank application still faces a tough road to approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, but West is optimistic.
He believes hundreds of companies will follow suit in the next decade to bypass the country's murky stock market and the problems with registration and liquidity that buying shares in Russia entails.
When they do, he said, he will be there, helping organize ADR issues and collecting fees in the form of stock in the issuer companies, which he called drastically undervalued.
"I'm going to make a lot of money," he said.
West, who arrived at an interview in Moscow on foot and by trolley-bus, has been exploring Russia's emerging market since 1990.
Back then, he teamed up with the All-Russian Institute of Computerized Tomography to sell CAT-scan equipment to the Russian regions of Buryatia and Udmurtia -- "medicine was hot back then," he said -- and worked with Gorky Studios to market new films of 25 Slavic fairy tales.
Then he hit on the ADR idea and began traveling the country, hanging out with factory managers and calming their suspicion of foreign investors by proving that he was a real man, a muzhik.
He went hunting at dawn at what some executives in Ulyanovsk called "the dacha," which turned out to be "their cars, sitting next to the Volga River," and on another trip "swam in the icy Volga" with other Russian executives.
With his muzhik credentials in order, West said he is in an ideal position to act as matchmaker between Russian firms and the U.S. financial institutions whose help they need, and to compete with other investment banks.
"It's pretty hard," he said, "to get your typical investment-bank guy to go out to Domodedovo airport and think of a way to fight your way onto a plane with a seat that reclines -- I mean, it won't sit up straight -- and then cram 8 people into a Zhiguli and the guy's driving 160 kilometers an hour in the snow."
That's what West said he did with a well-dressed delegation from the Bank of New York and the law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy to meet AvtoVAZbank's directors in Togliatti, in the central Volga region.
"It was their first experience on Aeroflot, with the cover on the overhead light flipping back and forth," West said. "They were running around taking pictures of the plane.
"Then we took them out on the Volga in a yacht to show them there's a lot more to Russia than just misery."
The lawyers ended up handling AvtoVAZbank's ADR application and the bank has pledged to issue the securities, West said. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is still reviewing the application.
West has nothing but praise for Russian business people.
"Their suits are old, their ties aren't Gucci ties, but they get things done," he said.
But, he said, they do not know their own strength.
"They can't believe you can sell Russian shares on the U.S. stock market -- they think it's too good to be true," he said. "They ask, 'Why would people in the West want to buy Russian shares?'"
He said that besides AvtoVAZbank, two others are planning to apply for ADR issues: Baltica Bank and AvtoVAZ.
Meanwhile, he can't wait to get back on the road.
"You drive six hours to get there, the guy was four hours late, showed no interest at all even though it was all planned in advance," he said of a recent trip to the KamAZ truck works in Tatarstan.
"Then we had to drive six hours back -- and there's no McDonald's or Wendy's on the road," he said. "But you're driving along in the guy's Lada, and it's making its way through the snow, up and down hills, and suddenly you get to something really beautiful."
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