CEOInterviews.AI
Start App
Try: AI strategy tariffs earnings guidance layoffs interest rates growth

Herman Gref

CEO, Sberbank of Russia

Search every verified Herman Gref interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Herman Gref, CEO of Sberbank, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on October 10, 2025, to discuss the bank's projects in healthcare, education, and social services. During the meeting, Gref announced plans to pay dividends totaling 850 billion rubles, which he described as the highest in the company's history, and expressed hope for record profits by year-end with a potential 50% dividend payout. He also outlined Sberbank's restructuring program for entrepreneurs and citizens in Crimea and Sevastopol, including payment deferrals and loan suspensions of up to a year, as well as a mobile medical diagnostic unit that can be deployed to patients' homes. In September 2026, Gref spoke at the BRICS summit in New Delhi about Sberbank's expanding operations in India. He stated that the bank has over 30,000 corporate customers in India and can now process financial transactions between the two countries in minutes, using only local currencies to avoid sanctions risks. Gref said Sberbank could handle more than 15% of India-Russia trade this year and is developing platforms to connect Indian producers with Russian marketplaces and to facilitate the recruitment of Indian workers to address Russia's labor shortage. He also mentioned plans to acquire two office buildings in New Delhi, expected to be completed by 2028, as part of a larger Russian business center investment.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“Things are going quite well for us. We have decided to pay out dividends totaling 850 billion rubles. These are the highest dividends in our company's entire history. We very much hope that with favorable market conditions, we will achieve record profits by the end of the year, and I also hope that we can then distribute a 50% dividend. We are not deviating from our obligations and hope to fulfill them completely.”

“Now it isn't such a big problem with the currency risk because we find the mechanism how to hedge them. If you speak about the sanctions, we don't use the USD or euro into the settlements; we use only our currencies between these our countries. And it means that it isn't such a high risk of sanctions for the participants of this system. Hope that in one or two years we can see many millions of customers of producers ”

“If you look at our activities in Indian market, we in charge last years first line in the creation of very convenient infrastructure for financial services between the countries, and we made a very good progress on that. And if few years before it was a lot of difficulties, now the transactions, the financial transactions between the countries, we can do in few minutes. And if you look at our branch here, it's the bi”

“Живопырки и есть эта самая экономика. И именно они, бизнес, большие живопырки, маленькие живопырки и предприниматели, которые создают эту самую добавленную стоимость, они и есть основа экономики. Экономика, как известно, основа всего государства. И эффективность этой экономики - это эффективность государства.”

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →