Yesterday in Nizhny Novgorod, another meeting of the Sberbank Committee for Relations with Minority Shareholders took place. The overall format had already been worked out at the meeting in Samara. The committee members, all neat, dressed up, and polished, sat at the presidium table. In the hall were minority shareholders from Nizhny. On the video link were Sber’s regional offices, with local individual shareholders sitting there. Regions represented: Vladimir and Kirov regions, the Republic of Mordovia, the Mari El Republic, the Chuvash Republic, and the Republic of Tatarstan. This time, Anton Karamzin, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board, joined the meeting from head office via video link. Overall, things went fairly well. The main problem remained the same. Shareholders are simply afraid to ask anything at all. Or they’re too shy. Most often it looks like this: Host: Now questions from such-and-such region. (the region appears on the screen in close-up) Sber’s regional head (very nervous): Our region has one question. (nods to someone in the room) Person in the room (even more nervous, reading from a sheet of paper): Could you please tell us what our bank’s development strategy is in the CIS countries (the Commonwealth of Independent States, a regional bloc of former Soviet republics)? Host: Let’s ask Anton Karamzin to answer that question. Karamzin: The strategy is such-and-such, blah blah blah Host: Any more questions from this region? Sber’s regional head (on the verge of panic): No, no. We have no more questions. It’s unclear whether the shareholders just don’t care (I don’t believe that), or whether they aren’t shareholders at all but Sber employees dragged in as extras, or whether they are shareholders but are convinced that if they ask sharp questions or start arguing, they’ll be locked in the bank vault forever. Of all the participants, Tatarstan and Mordovia were the liveliest. One guy from Tatarstan flat-out said that Sberbank shares were a bubble (I wonder whether they locked him in the vault after all). And the exchange with the Nizhny Novgorod locals sitting in the hall was interesting too. What struck me most was the transformation of Sber’s public position on the Opel deal: A few months ago, at a similar meeting in Samara, Senior Vice President and Management Board member Denis Bugrov said there would be no purchase. A purchase did not fit the bank’s strategy. There would be financial guarantees for the deal. It was a neat and profitable business. Then, as we know, the position changed. And this time Deputy Chairman Karamzin said that in fact the purchase was exactly what fit the bank’s strategy. Buying Opel was fantastic: we would get technology and might save the auto industry, which owes us a lot of money. Political motives were denied both times. We’ll see what happens next. I’m very curious to see exactly how the mythical and legendary “new Opel technologies” are supposed to save Russia’s auto industry. So far I see only one possibility: The new technologies consist of a little box filled with golden magic dust. German Gref, dressed as a Disney fairy, laughing brightly and tumbling through the air, will fly around the long-suffering car plants, sprinkling them with the dust. Under its magical influence, the auto workers—whose hands, for decades, have apparently been growing out of the wrong place (a Russian idiom meaning they’re hopelessly inept)—will suddenly turn into industrious dwarfs. The plant managers, who until now have been occupied exclusively with stealing, will reform and organize the production of excellent cars. Perhaps animals and birds will come to help the workers and managers too. A little badger carries a nut, a fawn rolls along a wheel, and a cheerful titmouse delights everyone with its song. And Sberbank, of course, earns an excellent profit from all of this for its shareholders.