Who Vladimir Kalinov, the new executive vice-president of retail at Raiffeisen, is

Vladimir Kalinov, 40, is awaiting the NBR's approval to officially take over the position of vice-president of the retail segment at Raiffeisen Bank, the third-largest bank in terms of assets at the end of 2010 and one of the strongest players in retail banking.

After more than five years of scanning for sources of risk, the Bulgarian banker has before him the challenge of running the retail business on a market that is trying to prepare for a reboot, with Raiffeisen being in full process of regaining its one-time market share.

The Austrians decided in the last part of 2010 to bring to the helm of the retail division none other than the vice-president of the risk division at a time when quality of credit portfolios was (and will probably remain) high on all banks' agendas.

But the shift from thoroughly analysing risks to ambitious sales targets should not be very difficult considering that when he was vice-president of the risk division Kalinov said he was "open to the business", careful when it came to the balance between the rigour of risk management (which is independent of the commercial function) and the efforts of his colleagues in the active business lines to bring revenues to the bank.