Friday & Saturday: St. Petersburg

For our tour of the Hermitage Museum and the primary historical sights in St. Petersburg, we had a beautiful day - both snowy and sunny!

Our Friday night dinner was at a cozy Dostoevskian restaurant aptly named The Idiot.

Saturday we ventured out to Pushkin to tour Catherine the Great's summer palace and the conservatory where Pushkin studied and lived. Our dinner on Saturday night was at a delicious restaurant featuring the cuisine of the Caucauses, where much vodka was consumed by all. But we got safely back on the night train to Moscow and were happy to end up back "home" at the Moscow Holiday Inn!

Thursday: Trains & Automobiles

We began the day at Ford Motor Company, getting a quick immersion in the booming Russian auto industry from Nigel Brackenbury, president of Ford Russia. We had lunch with 4 (count them, four!) GSB alumni who work at PromSvyaz Capital, an innovative private equity/real estate investment firm. Our final meeting of the day was with Rosgosstrakh, where we heard the story of a formerly state-owned enterprise that has experienced a dramatic rise in profitability over the past 10 years.

We spent the evening touring Moscow by bus, to take in the 'city lights,' then boarded the night train to St. Petersburg. Our Russian trip leaders informed us that the way to take the night train is to drink lots of vodka and eat Russian snacks, so we happily complied!

Wednesday: Politics and Culture, 2.0

Our day started outside the Russian Federation Council building, as we were watched closely by a number of guards with large automatic weapons. Once our host escorted us inside, we had the opportunity to meet with one of Russia´s most prestigious senators. He exhorted us (as future US business leaders) to think about expanding our businesses into Russia and starting new businesses within Russia.

Perhaps our most highly anticipated meeting of the trip was our visit with Yandex, the ¨Russian Google.¨ We peppered the co-founder and CEO, Arkady Volozh, with questions about the firm´s competitive positioning, relationship with Google, and talent recruitiment and management. The meeting was a great success and we all left wishing that we had more time together. After the meeting, we were able to conduct a first-hand comparison of the Yandex cafeteria to the various offerings at the GooglePlex in Mountain View -- we all agreed that Google wins!

In the evening, the culture-seekers among us indulged in some traditional Russian dance at the Moiseev Ballet. The dancers were captivating, and dozing off was much rarer...

Tuesday: Intro to Politics & Culture

Tuesday brought us to the US Embassy, where we had a fascinating conversation with Ambassador Burns and his staff, on topics including nuclear cooperation, economic incentives, and election year politics. In striking contrast, we spent the afternoon with an animated Venezuelan entrepreneur who has been working in Russia since the mid-1980s, and is now the founder and majority shareholder of a publicly-traded restaurant conglomerate -- one of our team members was even asked to launch a new franchise in Hong Kong. In the afternoon, we learned about Private Equity and Real Estate investment from the experts at Alfa Capital.

We jumped into the cultural life of Moscow with a visit to the Bolshoi Theater. After a meeting with the deputy director, we were lucky enough to catch a performance of Giselle, which was beautifully done. Due to jet lag and other unavoidable factors, a significant portion of the men fell asleep in their plush velvet seats.

Monday: The Meetings Begin

We kicked off the formal portion of our trip with a visit to McKinsey Moscow, where we reuinited with Maxim Ufaev, GSB ´07 and got an excellent overview of the current economic climate in Russia. We then visited the construction site of one of Moscow´s newest and most prestigious mixed-use skyscrapers, where we met with Mirax Group, the turnkey developers, to gain insight into the real estate development industry in Russia.

Our afternoon featured meetings with TNK-BP, a joint venture oil & gas company with both Russian and British shareholders, and Troika Dialog, the oldest and largest Russian investment bank. Excitement was high at the TNK-BP offices due to a recent government raid on their facilities and accusations of industrial espionage levied on two of their employees.

Sunday: Sightseeing in Red Square

We began our day with a visit to Red Square, where we learned about the evolution of Red Square from medieval times through the tsars, and the changes during the Soviet era. We toured the beautiful St. Basil's Cathedral and saw evidence of the tremendous restoration that has been going on for the past 15 years in the historic buildings of the central city. Although the weather was not cooperative (quite cold and mushy snow), we still managed to take some fun photos throughout Red Square and in the Kremlin.

Saturday: We have arrived!

Throughout the day on Saturday, most of our trip members arrived to great fanfare at the lovely Holiday Inn Sushevsky in Moscow. Turns out the Holiday Inn is a lot nicer than we all expected from our experiences in the US!
We jumped into the Moscow lifestyle with a cocktail reception (graciously hosted by Pavel Khokhryakov, GSB '04) at the City Space Bar, with a magnificent 360 degree view of the city. Afterwards, the most hardy of us headed to the trendy Club Opera, where they attempted to exercise "face control" but we managed to use our business school skills (aka, money) to get through the door. After much vodka and dancing, one unnamed member of our group found his way to the wrong Holiday Inn, and instead of heading straight back to our hotel, chose to take a long nap at a nearby 24-hour diner.