Boris Jordan: The Man Who Made Moscow's Market

When Victor Paul first met Boris Jordan in Moscow in 1992, both were novice investment bankers helping the Russian government sell off thousands of state enterprises. One day, recalls Paul, who currently heads Morgan Grenfell & Co.'s Moscow operations, "Boris asked me why I wasn't trading equities. I told him the market wasn't developed enough yet. You know what Boris said? He said he wanted to create the market, not wait for it to develop."

That's just what happened. In his three years with CS First Boston in Moscow, the tall, cherub-faced Jordan, now only 28, practically built the Russian equity market from scratch. While other big foreign investment banks shied away, he created securities from the assets of Russian companies and marketed them to foreign buyers. Last year, CSFB attracted $1.2 billion of the $1.8 billion of foreign investment in Russian equities.