The only Western oligarch in Moscow

Stephen Jennings is very tall — about six feet seven. He wraps his body into contortions to fit his limbs into his chair in his central Moscow office. He would certainly suffer in Aeroflot’s economy class —  but luckily he has his own jet. He’s also a towering figure in Russian business. His investment bank, Renaissance Capital, is worth up to £3 billion, and he owns roughly 80 per cent of it. He is, says another Moscow banker, ‘the only foreign oligarch in Russia’.

This 47-year-old Kiwi hasn’t just had a front-row seat in the turbulent changes of the last 15 years of Russian business and politics. He’s played a key role in those changes. ‘We’ve been involved in building the markets here, developing the markets, over a very long time. We’re part of the system.’

He started working for Credit Suisse arranging privatisations in his native New Zealand, an experience which gave him a firm belief in neo-liberal reforms.