The Russian bank VTB is a recognised leader of the national financial industry having gained a sustained competitive edge in all segments of the banking market. To put it into simple terms, the assets of the Bank as of September 2008 amounted up to US$113 billion. In 2007, The Banker magazine ranked VTB the 60th among the world’s 1,000 largest banks in terms of capital. Now that’s a major enterprise.
Presently, the Government of the Russian Federation is a major shareholder of VTB, with its share accounting for 77.5%. During the Bank’s IPO, made in May 2007, 22.5% of VTB shares were placed among Russian and international investors. The total amount of funds raised approximated US$ 8 billion, making VTB’s IPO the world’s largest public offering in 2007. It also proved to be the first truly public IPO in the history of the Russian stock market, since it resulted in more than 120,000 Russians becoming VTB shareholders.
Striving to diversify its activity, VTB Group continues to expand the scope of its operations in the Russian market and offers its customers a wide range of banking products and services applicable worldwide.
Exiting the elevator into the VTB world on the 6th floor (the bank occupies three floors and lets out two floors here), the thoughts of frenetic activity on the streets of the City are long forgotten. We head through to one of the bright, colour-filled breakout / cafeteria spaces where we meet with VTB Head of Corporate Services Stephen Sharp, Swanke Hayden Connell’s Max Lishmund and Overbury Senior Project Manager John Penny. We sit with a coffee and ask Stephen to tell us about the origins of this project. ‘About 2-3 years ago part of the bank was IPOd and part of that was a strategy to create an investment bank – to create a champion Russian vehicle,’ he tells us. ‘A business strategy was put together to look at how that was to be achieved, and the resources that would be required. It was decided at this point that they would need new premises and they went through the whole process of selecting buildings, and Cornhill was selected in October 2007. I came on board in January 2008 to pull together the whole delivery of the fit-out here.
‘Swanke was already involved, along with Cushman & Wakefield as our Project Managers and a whole range of M&E contractors. We then went out to tender on the fit-out, and finally selected Overbury to do the job.’
‘We were on board from around September 2007,’ Max confirms. ‘We’d started trying to pick up concept designs and put early concepts together. I think it’s fair to say that, before Steve’s time, it was quite a woolly brief. Investment banks tend to base their brief on a series of pre-set standards. However the nice thing about working with VTB was that they didn’t do this.
‘As you walk around you will see that there are older parts and there are newer parts to the building. Where other banks may have been more cautious about dealing with Grade II listings’, VTB were open minded on that front, we had the opportunity here to create something from scratch.
‘The thing is that we were essentially creating a whole new bank here,’ Stephen explains. ‘The important thing for me was that we got the brand and image right within the confines of the fit-out. It was important to add to that with elements like this breakout space here, which we made a little more funky and added colour to. It’s incredible how much this space – and the one we have on the floor below – are used.
‘When we first looked at this, it was clear that, as Max says, the brief we had given was a little woolly. To be honest, the brief had been given by bankers, who had no real idea of what they were trying to create. My view was, and I made it very clear with these guys, that we have a budget of money, we’re going to manage that but we’re not going to cut corners for the sake of quality. What I convinced our board of was that we were creating a new bank here – a new image, a new brand – and we will live and die by that first impression. A lot of people, for example, go to our 6th floor and say ‘Wow – this is impressive!’ and that’s what we were looking for.
‘What I liked about Overbury was the whole quality programme they run through when they do their delivery – Perfect Delivery. That’s what this project was all about.’
‘There are a lot of bankers based in the City who move between companies,’ Max takes over, ‘and VTB wanted to pick up on some of the talent that was available at the time. They wanted an environment that was different from the other banks.’
‘Just because everybody else uses SBFI trading desks, does that mean we’re going to use them as well?’ Stephen asks rhetorically. ‘No, we’re not going to do that. We decided that we’re going to use system-based furniture, so we sat down with Faram and we redesigned what we wanted to do. I must say that Faram were really good and helped us design the system we required.’
‘So the traders aren’t actually working on trading desks. You have technology here that enabled Faram to make a few tweaks to a kit of parts to create trading desks. It has things such as split tops, while we went into an awful lot of the engineering of the screen arms – these desks do not wobble,’ Max reveals.
A lot of thought, time and effort has been put into the issue of the trading floor facilities of course, including heating and ventilation, and the integration of leading edge technology. It is the latter, together with Max’s intelligent design, that has enabled a floor (unlike the floors below in the former Lloyds Building) not originally designed for trading to be transformed into a functional, stylish facility. There might not be the double height ceilings here, yet the combination of technology and design has made short work of the fact. ‘It was a nice isolated area for us to work on,’ John says of the far from straightforward Overbury fit-out of the trading floor. ‘It wasn’t spread out over floors, it was contained in one tight area – which was a benefit to us all. One thing we did that I certainly hadn’t done before was a full test to make sure that the banking systems remain up and running should there be a power cut. We had to bring the whole building into that – and that was quite a challenge.’
Another major challenge facing the project team was the integration of the old with the new. While walking through the contemporary reception space, cutting edge trading floor or funky breakout zones, it is easy to forget that much of this building is listed and far from modern.
The first glimpse you get of this fact is through the circulation areas, which are extremely well preserved and add an amazing comparative to the views through the building. This, however, still does not prepare us for the treatments applied to the meeting suite, boardroom and, especially, the auditorium. ‘It was clear that VTB wanted an auditorium for the 5th floor, but a facility that was not an auditorium all the time,’ Max explains. ‘Whereas other banks would have separate spaces – an auditorium, a function room and so on – we have created a multifunction room. It is one room. It gets away from fixed auditorium chairs and what people would expect to find.’
This section of the facility boasts incredible ‘original’ decoration, with preserved wood panelling re-used throughout, and sensitively combined with modern IT (the multifunction room boasts one of the largest plasma screens you’ll ever see) and modern furniture elements.
This was a job that required a huge amount of bespoke furniture based around the room layouts and the technology that they wanted to include within the furniture for video conferencing. Bene provided the furniture solution for all the executive areas, and meeting and conference rooms. These included a special one-off boardroom table that was 7.6 metres long, in a boat-shape. We are told this is the biggest table Bene has ever made with its AL system, and, when you consider that it still only had four legs and the rest is supported by the centrally mirror clad box, that is some engineering.
The Austrian manufacturer also created special credenzas that matched the table in terms of veneer yet had to house large mobile AV racks and LCD screens up to 65in which are controlled via remote control so that the user can activate the screen whilst sitting at the table and, when a conference call is over, they can house back in the credenza at the touch of a button.
Sensitive, intelligent, sympathetic, bright; these are all words that spring to mind when considering the VTB Capital home. We’re not sure we’ll be able to say the same about the hordes hovering outside the building the following day!
