I meet Andrey Dashin in a conference room on the third floor of Alpari Tower, his company’s Cyprus headquarters, perched along the second Polemidia roundabout in Limassol. As we speak, the Tower is still under construction. Builders hover out front, and the elevator is encased in protective foam – but the grand opening is just days away (it took place last Thursday) and they’re flying in Anna Vissi to sing at the event, thus ensuring maximum publicity. Does Mr Dashin know Ms Vissi personally? “Actually I don’t know her,” he replies smoothly, “but I’ve heard a lot. She is quite famous, and it would be interesting for me to meet her, and to know more about her personality.”
Getting to know Anna Vissi presumably doesn’t come cheap, but Alpari can afford it, being among the biggest forex (foreign exchange) brokers in the world. The numbers are daunting. The company has over 170,000 active live accounts in more than 150 countries, with monthly trading volumes in excess of $210 billion (as of May 2011). That’s turnover, of course, not actual money coming in – “not the physical money transactions,” adds Andrey, a touch confusingly – but any slice of a pie that massive is bound to be considerable, especially since Alpari (almost uniquely among big brokerage companies) is still owned by only three people. The owners are also the co-founders, Andrey and his two business partners, who started the company “like a hobby” in 1998. This was in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan, and at first “we never [even] dreamed of moving into Moscow,” he recalls with a laugh. Then, “step by step, eventually we have presence everywhere.”
His English is excellent, albeit tending to leave out definite and indefinite articles in the Russian style. I’d seen photos on his personal website (www.dashin.ru) but the photos don’t prepare you for how softly he speaks or how lightly he moves, almost panther-like as he bounds into the room. He’s clearly very fit, though the source of his fitness is surprising: every morning he gets up at 5am and goes boxing for one and a half hours, either with punching-bags or training with a coach or, occasionally, sparring in the ring with other fighters. He’s been boxing since he was a child, he explains, and “it helps you to be more mature personally, to be more organised. And also it’s the place where you can let [out] your anger”.
“It’s interesting sport because in the ring you have to…” he hesitates slightly, “you have to be animal. You have to hit. But you know, outside the ring, we are very friendly to each other. And this sort of mentality helps to keep your mind open – because people don’t understand how it’s possible for friends in the ring to fight each other, and try to punch each other… we have to differentiate our life in sport, in business, in family. In the ring, outside the ring.”
It’s an interesting distinction – because there does seem to be a slight dichotomy in Andrey’s life. ‘In the ring’ he’s Alpari, a cutting-edge company whose “advanced technologies” give it an edge over its competitors. “Would you like to trade forex from your iPhone? At Alpari there will be an app for that” promises a poster outside the third-floor offices. ‘Outside the ring’, however, a picture emerges of a more austere, old-fashioned person, devoted to his wife Yulia (an economist who now works in television) and three kids, 10-year-old Alexandra, six-year-old Pavel and four-month-old Anfisa.
He’s cautious with people; when it comes to friends, “I don’t have a lot of them”. Despite his wealth, he’s not flamboyant. If he wakes up at 5am, it’s because he goes to bed at 9 or 10. (Doesn’t he have social obligations in the evenings? “I think mostly in the evenings I have obligations to my family”.) He’d like to spend more time with the children, he says, but instead makes sure the little time they have together is filled with “meaningful” activities, not just lying in bed watching cartoons.
Like what?
“For example, go into church, to explain something to my children what it means to believe in God. Because I think it’s meaningful. It’s much more meaningful than watching cartoons.”
“Are you religious?” I ask, with some surprise.
He hesitates, laughing uncertainly. “I don’t know. Probably yes.”
The hesitation may be due to the fact that religion was officially frowned-upon during his childhood – because of course Tatarstan was still part of the Soviet Union when Andrey was born there, 37 years ago. Rather unexpectedly, he has fond memories of life under Communism: “I was young, but I still have this impression in my memory that people were happy,” he says. “They were happy because everything was predictable. Simple and predictable. Maybe we didn’t have caviar, we didn’t have a big variety of food – very simple food – but it was very calm and predictable era. I was a child, probably, [but] from what I remember people were smiling, and I think they were satisfied. Mostly they were satisfied.”
Easy to say – but he himself might’ve been less satisfied had he come of age under the old regime. After all, even as a teenager, “I just always wanted to be businessman”. His first business venture came when he was just 16, buying women’s perfume in Moscow and re-selling it at a profit in Kazan – but of course things had changed by then. Andrey has vivid memories of government tanks trundling down the street during the country’s brief uprising, and recalls marching with older students in street demonstrations, holding placards he didn’t even understand. “I wasn’t scared,” he shrugs. “I was too young to be scared, too brave, and maybe too stupid to be scared. For me, it was just fun.”
That makes him sound wild and reckless, and maybe he was (after all, he was only 14). “I didn’t exactly shine in school,” he admits on the website, despite the fact that his parents were teachers at a local financial institute – and his son Pavel, he tells me with a laugh, seems to be cut from the same cloth: “I don’t know if it’s unfortunately, but he has the same personality as me!”
How would he describe that personality?
“You know, we are very agile,” he replies, “and for us it’s very difficult to be very thorough and painstaking, and to pay attention to one subject for a long time. So I couldn’t be, for example, an accountant.” His corporate philosophy is to hire creative people and give them “space to think, to create something. It’s not possible to have creative people in very bureaucratic structure”. That’s another reason why he gets up at 5am – to give himself some “calm time” when he can think creatively, before the hurly-burly of the office.
It’s an entrepreneurial energy, open to flexible thinking and a bit of chaos – though it shouldn’t be confused with flakiness. Andrey, above all, is a practical person. Even at school, he explains, it wasn’t lack of brains that made him a mediocre student, it was practical thinking: “If I didn’t understand why I had to study this subject – for example Chemistry, why would I need this subject in my life – I couldn’t force myself to study it”. He’s practical about everything – even Open Heart, the charitable fund run by Alpari. I raise the subject, on the basis that anyone who gives money to charity has a right to tell the world about it, but he doesn’t start waxing sentimental; instead he talks about it like a business venture, stressing its efficient use of limited resources. He decided to give money to an orphanage in Russia, he explains – refurbishing the place, buying the orphans new clothes and so on – so prospective parents looking for kids to adopt found “clean, happy children and a nice environment”. The result, he adds with satisfaction, was a 95 per cent adoption rate, finding homes for almost every orphan in the place. He might be talking o
f some particularly shrewd investment.
Here, again, is the austere, un-flamboyant millionaire. Even his non-business projects are surprisingly low-tech, for a man who’s made his fortune in online forex trading. He’s restored an ancient church in Tatarstan, near the place where he grew up, choosing icons and restoring old paintings, and is now pouring money into a working farm in Russia – “cows, pigs, chickens, dairy products, eggs” – which will soon become operational. He also plans to start his own boxing club in Limassol, so he can still be involved when he himself becomes too old to box.
His lifestyle is low-key. His business partner – one of the other co-founders – now lives in London, managing Alpari (UK), but Andrey is happy with the least glamorous part of the Group, handling the countries of the former Soviet Union and the Cyprus financial-services office. “I had many opportunities to move to another country,” he shrugs. “Britain, other European countries, US. But somehow – I don’t know, they were outlandish and different somehow”. He loves to visit London, but couldn’t live there; “I’m personally different with British people”. Cypriots, on the other hand, he finds “mentally somehow close to Russians”, and also prefers living in a small city. “For me, New York is too big. I couldn’t live in New York”.
There must be something though, I probe, a little desperately. It can’t be just a life of working hard and going to bed early. He must have some vice, some indulgence, something he spends money on?
“I don’t know,” he replies, with the air of someone sincerely trying to help. “I like good wine and, you know, very common and simple food. Actually,” he adds, warming to his subject, “it’s a usual misunderstanding. Usually people think that if someone has big money, he’s supposed to have different life. But it’s not that way.
“Having big money, you understand even more that you can’t get pleasure from your car, from your yacht, or private jet, or something else. And you get much pleasure from having party with your old friends – with your roommates, or your classmates. You can’t buy these things.”
So tell me, I ask straight out, indiscretion being the better part of valour: “How rich would you say you are, personally?”
He waits a beat, the grey-green eyes unblinking. “You know,” he replies, “it’s already a matter of pride for us, for owners, more than a matter of money. Because I think” – he laughs wryly – “we already have enough money to be able to retire. But still I think business is quite an addictive thing. You need to be first, you need to compete, you need to fight with competitors. And usually, successful businessmen don’t think about the business like a cash-producing entity.”
I’m all out of questions. Andrey Dashin gets up, looking sleek with his shaved head and elegant blue suit. I’m expecting some brief concluding chit-chat (it’s been a very pleasant conversation) but instead he nods, proffers a limp handshake – “It was nice to meet you” – and bounds out of the conference room as swiftly and lightly as he came in. I understand. He’s got a billion-dollar business to run.
