Armand Hammer, founder of Occidental Petroleum and the Soviet Union’s long-time business partner, came up with the concept — which is why older Muscovites sometimes refer to the WTC as the Hammer Centre. US President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev were the project’s most ardent supporters.
Today, the WTC has become the biggest Russian Business Centre in Russia and plays a leading role in the Russian business services market. An interview with WTC’s CEO Valery Serov.
What was the purpose of founding and building the WTC? The World Trade Centre in Moscow was established 30 years ago in order to promote foreign trade. Its main objective and essential purpose have not changed since then, and the demand for its services has not diminished either. Its tenants and loyal customers are over 500 of the largest and best-known national and international corporations, which value the centre’s tradition of quality services and the security it provides. Many modern business centres have been built in Moscow recently, and all of them claim to offer top-quality services. But companies that have been longstanding market leaders prefer the WTC. For example, one of our newest leaseholders is Deutsche Bank.
Could you provide some specific figures? The WTC is a comprehensive architectural system comprising two Class A office towers, a press centre, a conference centre featuring a multi-purpose hall which holds up 1,200 people as well as an amphitheatre and negotiating rooms, which can also double as exhibition spaces.
We recently renovated the conference centre and it is now one of the best, if not the best, in Russia. The WTC’s first event after modernisation was to host a visit from South Korea’s President, who conducted meetings with Korean and Russian businessmen there.
The WTC also features a 575-room deluxe Crowne Plaza Hotel and an apartment hotel called Mezhdunarodnaya2, with a total area of 49,000 sq m. We recently opened a 20,000 sq m 30-storey, Class A office building and a 20-storey hotel with club suites for business executives, as well as several underground parking levels, which increased the number of parking spaces to now accommodate 2,500 vehicles.
This work completed the WTC’s development and expanded its floor space to 270,000 sq m.
The entire WTC complex shares a common infrastructure which provides over 500 business services, including comfortable living conditions and premises for business, talks, roundtables, conferences, congresses, exhibitions, etc., equipped with all the latest communication technology. Our guests can book railway, air and theatre tickets or hire cars without leaving the WTC, which also houses shopping arcades, restaurants and beauty salons as well as fitness centres. In a word, they can live comfortably without leaving our building complex.
We plan on modernising one of our hotels and one of the office towers in the near future. The other buildings have either been renovated or are newly built. The centre is kept up to modern luxury standards in spite of its age and venerable history.
How many events do you host on average every year? Last year, the WTC hosted almost 700 major events attended by over 350,000 business leaders, public figures, scientists and politicians from 70 countries. In the 30 years since it was established, the WTC has hosted some 9,000 exhibitions, congresses, meetings, forums, roundtables and presentations as well as other various Russian and international events.
We have hosted Preliminary G8 and APEC summits, presentations by former President Vladimir Putin and incumbent President Dmitry Medvedev as well as debates between business leaders and government officials. Its clients and guests have included presidents and prime ministers from many countries, and some of the world’s most renowned political figures, including Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger and Helmut Schmidt.
The Manchester United football team stayed at the WTC in 2008, when they played Chelsea in Moscow.
Many important events have been held at the WTC, which serves as proof of our high quality services.
One of the WTC’s largest and most widely used venues is the Mercury Club. It is chaired by Yevgeny Primakov, President of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Ministers, governors, MPs, big businessmen, political analysts, scientists, and public figures meet there to discuss serious issues in a creative and intellectual atmosphere. They analyse key issues on the country’s socio-economic development, coordinate their interests and propose the basis for attaining priority goals, and design as well as approve recommendations to benefit the business community and society as a whole.
Information on the meetings’ conclusions is forwarded to the country’s key leadership figures and many government decisions or resolutions incorporate proposals which were first voiced at the Club’s meetings.
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry holds many events at the Club, which is a logical choice as it is the WTC’s majority shareholder. In fact, we see ourselves as a department of the Chamber of Commerce in our commitment to ensuring its smooth operation and implementing many of the Chamber’s intentions, which are among the WTC’s major priorities.
You held high positions during the Soviet era and now have an executive job. You chaired the Soviet Union’s State Construction Committee, were Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, and President of the International Union of Builders. Quite a career! You now direct the World Trade Centre, a major modern company. What skills developed during your Soviet-era experiences do you still use in the postSocialist era? I still use many elements from that period today; for example, my habit of thoroughly planning my work days and even weeks in minute detail. I picked up the habit while working in the tightly organised Ministry of Assembly and Special Construction, which built unique Soviet projects. I also greatly benefited from my work at the State Planning Committee and many elements of its work are now being widely used abroad.
I was invited to the United States to lecture on aspects of my management experience during the Soviet era that could be applied today. The audience listened to my story attentively and asked many practical questions. Modern management methods can easily incorporate the experience my generation of managers has to offer. This is not surprising, as a boss’ main objective, be it now or back then, is to try to learn as many new things as possible.
Soviet experience in managing large projects has been widely underestimated, which is a pity, as any builder with decades of experience will tell you. I used much of that experience when we modernised the WTC building in downtown Moscow and moved on to the building project’s second phase without stopping operations on the first site for even a single day. Some of the decisions we made were quite unusual. For example, we came to the conclusion that the yet unfinished second phase had become morally obsolete despite its high quality, and that some of its architectural and planning solutions no longer met market requirements for top-class buildings.
We concluded that we had to demolish a nine-storey building and auxiliary structures, which involved 18,000 metric tons of reinforced concrete, without halting work on the WTC. Our objective was to build a premium quality facility, and we have succeeded in doing so.
World Trade Centre
Moscow 12 Krasnopresnenskaya Naberezhnaya
Moscow 123610, Russia
Phone: +7 (495) 258-1212
Fax: +7 (495) 253-1041
E-mail: sb@wtc.msk.ru
Web: http://www.wtcmoscow.ru
