Programme

The latest internet technologies are rapidly changing the landscape for traditional industries. However, across the world, the agro-industry relies on traditional practices, focuses on the social wellbeing of people in rural areas, and demands special attention from the state. Can these factors slow down the transformation of industry? What information and internet technologies are already changing the landscape of agricultural production and what new growth opportunities can technology unlock?

Moderator
Oleg Goshchansky, Chairman, Managing Partner, KPMG in Russia and the CIS

Oleg Goshchansky

Chairman, Managing Partner, KPMG in Russia and the CIS

Chairman and Managing Partner, KPMG in Russia and the CIS, Member of the KPMG Global Board and the Board of KPMG in Europe, the Middle East and Africa
Oleg joined KPMG in Moscow in 1997. Since 1 October 2012, Oleg acts as Chairman and Managing Partner of KPMG in Russia and the CIS. Prior to this appointment, Oleg was CIS Head of Audit. Under Oleg KPMG's Audit practice became the biggest in the Russian market. Oleg is as a member of KPMG's Global Board and Global Council, as well as of the Board of KPMG in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Oleg has extensive experience with companies in various sectors of the economy. He has actively assisted in a number of IPOs by large Russian groups on international and Russian stock exchanges, in major mergers and acquisitions, as well as complex restructuring cases.
Oleg is a member of the Board of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), of the U.S.-Russia Business Council Board and as well as a Supervisory Board Member of The National Coordination Council for Development of Economic Relations with the Asia-Pacific Region.

Panellists
Naum Babaev, Founder, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Damate Group
Matthias Berninger, Vice-President for Public Affairs, Mars Incorporated
Jonathan Brown, Director, Syngenta LLC
Kirill Varlamov, Head, Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF)
Ivan Lebedev, State Secretary, Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation
Sergey Mikhailov, Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of the Investments and Strategic Planning Committee, Cherkizovo Group
Alexander Nikitin, Head of Administration of Tambov Region
Yves Picquet, Head of CropScience Division for Russia and CIS, Bayer

Naum Babaev

Founder, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Damate Group

The co-founder and chairman of the Board of Directors of DAMATE Group – one of the largest producers of turkey meat in the country, chairman of the Board of Directors of Russian Dairy Company, one of the leading producers of raw milk in Russia. His professional career began in 1996. He has been working in the agribusiness since 2000. At the present time, DAMATE Group is implementing a project for expansion of turkey production and processing from 60 to 155 thousand tons of finished product per year, under the leadership of Naum Babaev. The largest milk farm in Siberia – a joint project with Danone, is a part of DAMATE Group. The company also owns the leading producer of milk in Penza region – the Penza dairy processing plant (Molkom). One of the first projects created by Naum Babaev in 2007 was Russian dairy company (Rusmolko). For a short period of time, the company became one of the largest producers of raw milk in the country. Since 2012, the company has been implementing a joint investment program with the Singapore holding OlamInternational. To date, Rusmolko has implemented a number of projects in crop production and dairy farming. Before joining his own business in 2006, Naum Babayev headed the agricultural sector of the Cherkizovo Group. Under his leadership and with direct participation, a number of projects have been implemented, including the creation of one of Russia's largest poultry holdings with a full production cycle. With active participation of Naum Babayev, Cherkizovo Group successfully conducted an IPO on the London Commodity Goods Exchange in 2006. Being one of the acknowledged experts in the poultry industry, Naum Babayev initiated the European Poultry Club, which in 2002 united the largest European poultry producers. Naum Babayev graduated from the Finance Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation in 1999 with a degree in finance and credit.

Matthias Berninger

Vice-President for Public Affairs, Mars Incorporated

Matthias Berninger was born in Kassel, Germany where he studied chemistry and political science from 1990 to 1994.
Matthias Berninger was elected between 1994 and 2007 four times as a Member of the German Federal Parliament representing the Green Party of his home state Hessen and served in several committees (Education, Science and Technology, Budget, Economic Affairs). From 2001 to 2005 he served in the Federal Government as Vice-Minister for Consumer Protection, Nutrition and Agriculture. The main focus of his time in government was on agricultural reform in Germany and Europe including trade policy, food safety and renewable energy.
From 2004 to 2007 he was leading the Green Party in Hessen, Germany. Matthias was involved in running political campaigns for his party on various elections federal and state level.
After 13 years in Politics Matthias retired in 2007 from his seat in the Federal Parliament and joined Mars Europe as Director Corporate health and Nutrition for Europe and the CIS. One of his core responsibilities was to globally facilitate the development of the Mars Health and Nutrition Strategy.
In April 2008 Matthias moved into the role of Global Head of Public Policy for Mars Incorporated. In his new role he continued to work on the Health and Nutrition Strategy for food and snackfood. Additionally, he led a global team to develop a cocoa sustainability strategy for the corporation.
Matthias joined the Global Chocolate Management Team of Mars Incorporated in 2009. In addition to his corporate responsibilities he supports Mars Chocolate in communication and strategy development.
In September 2009 Matthias was promoted as Vice President with responsibilities for the Global Public Policy and Programs team and the Public Affairs teams in Washington DC, Brussels, Moscow, Asia, Latin America, Africa and Middle East reporting into him. He also leads the global trade team within Mars, Incorporated.
He lives with his wife and children in Washington, D.C.

Kirill Varlamov

Head, Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF)

Kirill Varlamov is a head of Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF), created by the current President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. IIDF was established in March 2013. IIDF main goals are financial and consulting support of internet projects at all stages of development, searching and selecting startups and growing them to a highly valuable business.
Kirill is also a CEO at Naumen, company cofounded with Аleksandr Davydov in 2001. Naumen is one of the leading companies in software development in Russia.
Born in 1974 in a city of Sverdlovsk, Kirill graduated Ural State Technical University in 1996, attended classes at Bradley University, Peoria, IL. In 2012 Kirill graduated Moscow management school Skolkovo as Executive MBA. In November 2012 Kirill became a winner at national finals of Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur Of The Year” in IT section. That contest is being held for 27 years in 140 cities of 50 countries around the world.

Ivan Lebedev

State Secretary, Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation

Sergey Mikhailov

Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of the Investments and Strategic Planning Committee, Cherkizovo Group

Sergey Mikhailov has been Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors of Cherkizovo Group since 2006. Mr. Mikhailov led Cherkizovo Group during its successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange in 2006, making the Group the first Russian agricultural company listed on the LSE. Since 2006, Cherkizovo has been expanding rapidly and developing its business in Russia and it is now the country’s largest vertically integrated agricultural company and meat producer. In 2001, Mr. Mikhailov was Marketing Director of Cherkizovo Meat Processing Plant. He was promoted to Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the plant in 2002 and, a year later, he became its Chief Executive Officer.In 1998, he founded the telecommunications company, aTelo, Inc., in the United States and was its CEO until 2001. In 1998, he trained as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs before moving to Morgan Stanley in 1999. He graduated from Georgetown University (Washington DC) in 2000 with a degree in Finance and Economics.

Alexander Nikitin

Head of Administration of Tambov Region

Graduated from Michurinsk State Agrarian University (MSAU).
Started his career as a consultant on financial and economic issues of Agrarian Reform and Rural Development support Fund.
Since 2009 - Head of MSAU.
Since 2011 - Chairman of the Tambov Regional Duma and member of the Board of public organization “Russian public Association of agricultural economists”.
Member of the Commission on agrarian-food policy, environment and ecology of the Legislators Council of the Russian Federation.
Included in the management personnel pool under the patronage of the President of the Russian Federation.
Awarded the badge of the trade Union of agro-industrial complex workers of the Russian Federation, medal named after T. Maltseva for the great contribution to the development of scientific and methodological support of farms effective activities in Russia on insurance, accounting and taxation. Awarded Honorary diplomas of Ministry of education and science of the Russian Federation and the medal "For contribution to science".

Yves Picquet

Head of CropScience Division for Russia and CIS, Bayer

Yves Picquet was born in Brussels and graduated from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, where he received a degree in agriculture, and another in production management.
Mr. Picquet started his agriculture career in a distribution company, where he was responsible for one of the regions of Belgium. From 1996 to 1998, he worked at DuPont, where he managed marketing and sales functions in the French-speaking part of Belgium. In 1998 he joined Rhone-Poulenc as a sales director. Two years later, a merger led to the creation of a new company, Aventis CropScience, where Yves Picquet became head of the same department. In 2002 Yves Picquet joined Bayer as a sales manager, and later also became a manager of the logistics department. From 2009 to 2012 he was a head of the Bayer CropScience in Romania. In 2012 he was assigned as the director of Crop Science in the CIS countries: Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Since 2017, Yves Picquet has been responsible for the development of the Crop Science division in Russia and the CIS.

Front row participants
Vasily Belov, General Director, Skolkovo Ventures
Neil Sturrock, President for Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Caucasus and Central Asia, PepsiCo

Vasily Belov

General Director, Skolkovo Ventures

Vasily brings to his position broad experience from both the public and private sectors in developing strategies for innovation and modernisation, with particular experience in the energy sector.
Vasily is a graduate from the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics, Moscow State University and an MBA from the American Institute of Business and Economics (AIBEc). He also took part in an Executive Management & Leadership programme at Cambridge Judge Business School in 2004.
His career started at IBS (2001- 2002) before moving to work for RUSAL, where he headed the department of new projects in the Aluminium Structures Division. In this capacity, he participated in the development strategy of the company and initiated projects to increase the efficiency of his division, as well as strategies to develop new products.
In 2004, he went on to work as a consultant for McKinsey, specializing in strategic consulting projects in metallurgy and the banking sector. This was then followed by his appointment as CEO and member of the Board of Directors of Fosborn Home, one of the earliest and biggest credit brokers in the Russian market (2006-2009).
In November 2009, he headed the project office of the Energy Commission for Modernisation and Technological Development of the Russian President working group. Since 2009, he is a member of the working group on energy efficiency of the Presidential Commission for Modernization and Technological Development of Russia's Economy, specialising in public policy in the field of energy conservation and efficiency, investments, innovations and public-private partnerships. In this capacity, he worked with the Skolkovo Foundation’s Energy Efficient Technologies Cluster.
In December 2011, he was appointed Executive Director of the Energy Efficient Technologies Cluster. In September 2013, he joined the Skolkovo Foundation Board. In November 2013, he was appointed Senior Vice President for Innovation.

Neil Sturrock

President for Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Caucasus and Central Asia, PepsiCo

Neil Sturrock has been appointed to the position of president, PepsiCo Russia, Ukraine and CIS, effective September 1st, 2017. Neil has a 28 year experience of working in PepsiCo on developed and emerging markets in USA, UAE, Egypt, Russia and Ukraine. He started to work for PepsiCo in 1989 as a financial controller in British office. His career in Russia started in 1993 when he took a position of financial director in Moscow. From 1995 to 1998 Neil Sturrock was leading a business of beverages in the East of Russia. Between 1998 and 2008 Neil was working as a general manager in Northern California and had several transformation-related assignments based in Spain, UAE and Egypt. From 2008 until 2015, Neil led PepsiCo business in Ukraine. For the last 1,5 years he was responsible for beverages, snacks and juices businesses of PepsiCo in Russia. Neil Sturrock studied in Exeter University, UK where he received a BA in Accounting & Finance.