Interview of Chief Information Officer of Renaissance Group Vahan Vardanian to Mediamax

Vahan Vardanian has been with Renaissance Capital since 2004, where he began as the Head of Strategic Projects. In 2005, Vahan was appointed as Group Chief Information Officer.
Since joining Renaissance, Vahan has transformed the IT function from a tactical support solution provider to a strategic business partner. The function has enabled the Group to double its trading volumes year over year, expand globally in CIS, Sub- Saharan Africa and Middle East, launch derivatives trading business, on-line electronic execution capability and client relationship platform amongst others

In 2008, Vahan won the IT Leader 2008 award in the Financial and Investment Services category “for outstanding contribution of Russian organizations to development of information technologies in the country” and in 2008 Vahan was named as the best IT Director in the Financial Services industry in Russia by Kommersant Daily.

Prior to joining Renaissance, Vahan Vardanian worked in BearingPoint and KPMG where he managed a variety of IT strategy development, enterprise integration and data warehousing projects for a wide range of Financial Services, Telecommunications and Government sectors in the USA, Russia and CIS. In 2002, Vahan, within the framework of USAID Tax and Customs Reforms program , provided consultations to the Customs Committee of Armenia as to issues of building a new technologic platform.

Vahan holds systems engineering degree from Armenian State Engineering University, MBA from Bentley University, McCallum Graduate School of Business in Boston, USA and most recently graduated from Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program.

- One gets the impression that IT does not yet play an important role in business development in Armenia. Why?

- Information technologies develop successfully in counties, which have a strongly developed domestic market. Armenia’s scales and the level of the country’s economic development are objective factors hindering IT development in volumes, in which they exist in the USA and in developed European counties.

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