Last year Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman, founders of the LetterOne investment vehicle, were sanctioned because of their connections to the Russian regime following its invasion of Ukraine. Since then ten LetterOne directors, including the former Standard Chartered CEO Lord Mervyn Davies, have received a total of $65 million in discretionary bonuses and retention payments. (The vehicle was worth $27 billion in 2021.) Davies has been paid $40 million by LetterOne in the past two years. $22 million of that was approved by shareholders before the war, but still. You don’t have to sympathise with Aven or Fridman to wonder if their London-based directors are taking advantage of a tragic situation. The FT, in a leader, recommends donations to the Kherson flood relief fund and suggests a sense of proportionality among LetterOne’s managers has “gone missing”. That’s putting it politely.
