As Kommersant has learned, Miguel Markaryants will be replaced as chairman of the board of the Asian-Pacific Bank (ATB) by a native of VTB, Vasily Palatkin. In his new position, he will have to solve problems in a new region for himself, but a strategic one for Russia – the Far East.
Several financial market participants told Kommersant that Vasily Palatkin could lead ATB. A source close to Mr. Palatkin confirmed this information. ATB told Kommersant that “personnel decisions on the appointment of the chairman of the bank’s board of directors come into force only after passing all the necessary corporate procedures and obtaining the approval of the Bank of Russia.” Until the completion of these procedures, the bank does not comment on information based on assumptions, rumors or unofficial sources, and does not support the dissemination of such messages, it indicated. ATB was left without a chairman of the board in mid-June. Prior to this, since the summer of 2024, this post was held by Miguel Markaryants, who decided to “take up other projects.”
ATB — one of the largest Russian credit institutions with foreign participation (7th place among foreign banks by assets). In the fall of 2021, the bank was acquired by the Kazakh group Pioneer Capital Invest. In general, among Russian banks, ATB ranks 145th in terms of assets and 127th in terms of equity capital, according to the Interfax ranking for the first quarter of 2026. According to RAS reporting, as of April 1, 2026, ATB’s assets exceeded 337.5 billion rubles, and its capital amounted to almost 40.7 billion rubles. Net profit for the first quarter amounted to 2.87 billion rubles. ATB is mainly involved in the retail sector.
Vasily Palatkin has been working in the banking industry for over 25 years. In particular, in such banks as Uralsib, Rus-Bank, Sberbank, the last bank where Mr. Palatkin worked was VTB, where he held the position of senior vice president, head of the departments of retail sales and development of service tools.
Vasily Palatkin has experience working in state banks; at one time he built a “turquoise bank” at Sberbank (an experimental project based on future technologies), then he went to work at VTB, where he oversaw a number of areas of retail business, recalls the head of Top Contact, Artur Shamilov. “For ATB, whose business is concentrated in the Far East, the arrival of such a manager will certainly be useful and will allow us to bring the experience of the largest players to this region,” he believes. According to IPM Consulting managing partner Anastasia Vladimirova, Vasily Palatkin is a prominent figure; at VTB he was actively involved in the development of the retail business in order to expand the bank’s various service functions, simplify processes and digitize them. Among his goals for VTB was precisely the development of customer service, as a result of which the customer base was significantly increased, and the image of the bank was gradually transformed from a purely clichéd state asset towards an extensive and modern banking structure.
“ATB is one of the largest banks in Eastern Siberia and the Far East, a network of more than 140 offices is concentrated there, there are branches in Moscow, in Yekaterinburg, but the main network is concentrated there, in Eastern Siberia and the Far East,” says Oleg Abelev, head of the analytical department of the Ricom-Trust investment company. “The new head of ATB will most likely have to scale and modernize the retail business, bring the best customer service practices to the regional level, unify and expand the product line, and here the experience of integrating Otkritie and VTB products will be useful.”
