Mike Calvey is currently the Chairman of Baring Ventures, a firm which advises private equity funds with assets of approximately $5 billion market value.
He was previously a founder and senior partner of Baring Vostok, a private equity firm recognized for its early investments in several innovative and highly successful companies, including Yandex, Tinkoff, and Kaspi.
Born in 1967 in the USA state of Wisconsin and growing up in Oklahoma, Michael Calvey studied computer science and business at the University of Oklahoma and finance at the London School of Economics. He started his professional career in 1989 as an investment banking analyst at Salomon Brothers in New York, where he focused on capital markets and M&A transactions in the US energy industry.
From 1991 to 1994, Michael Calvey worked at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, where he made investments in and arranged project financing for several of the first joint venture projects in the oil sector of the former Soviet Union, including projects owned by Conoco, British Gas, Gulf Canada, and others.
In 1994, Calvey was part of a team backed by Baring Asset Management (BAM) to raise a private equity fund, The First NIS Regional Fund, focused on Russia and other countries in the former Soviet Union. The anchor investors of the First NIS Fund were EBRD, the World Bank’s IFC, TIAA-CREF, and Fidelity. In 1997, together with several colleagues, Calvey founded Baring Vostok Capital Partners to assume the management responsibility from BAM for the First NIS Regional Fund. Baring Vostok also subsequently became part of Baring Private Equity International, a group of funds with investment operations primarily in Asia and Latin America in which he served either as a board member or as part of the investment committee.
My Story
In 1998, Baring Vostok experienced its first major economic crisis when Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt, the Ruble devalued sharply and the local stock market collapsed by 98%. Despite this, the First NIS Fund went on to return $600 million to shareholders, 4.0x the fund’s original capital in USD terms.
While the fund had a diversified and profitable portfolio ranging from forestry to chocolate and mobile telephony, the biggest driver of the fund’s returns was its early-stage investment in Burren Energy, an oil E&P and shipping company in Turkmenistan and West Africa (Congo). Burren later completed an IPO on the London Stock Exchange and was ultimately sold to Italy’s ENI for $3 billion.
Following the results of the First NIS Fund, Baring Vostok raised $205 million for its second fund, Baring Vostok Private Equity Fund LP, in 2000-2001. Besides EBRD and IFC, who remained anchor investors, the new fund was supported by several pension funds and funds-of-funds based in the USA, Canada, UK, and Europe. After 2000, the Baring Vostok funds began to focus primarily on the emerging Russian and CIS internet, software and fintech sectors, while continuing to invest in consumer and infrastructure businesses. The fund backed Yandex and Ozon at an early stage, companies that 10 years later became Russia’s equivalent of Google and Amazon. The $5 million seed round in 2000 which Baring Vostok led in Yandex was the only equity funding the company received until its IPO in 2011; the company later achieved a market capitalization of $25 billion at its peak.
From 2004 to 2011, Baring Vostok raised 3 more funds for investment in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union with total capital of approximately $2.5 billion. Investors in Baring Vostok funds by 2011 included more than 40 sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, university endowments, and funds-of-funds from North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Among other investments, Baring Vostok funds became early shareholders of Tinkoff, a leading Russian online bank, and Kaspi, the leading marketplace, payments and fintech player in Kazakhstan. Both companies were led by management teams that were among the most innovative globally in their sectors, and both later grew to exceed $20 billion+ market capitalizations following their IPOs on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
In 2019, following a dispute with two local shareholders of Vostochny, a Russian retail bank, Mike Calvey was arrested and wrongfully detained in Moscow. The arrest shocked Russia’s investment community and generated significant international press coverage and support for him. More details about the Vostochny case can be found here. Michael Calvey left Russia in January 2022 after a Moscow court withdrew any remaining restrictions on him, and he hasn’t returned since then. On April 5th, 2024, Calvey’s probation period expired, and his conviction was vacated (nullified).
On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Baring Vostok funds had a remaining net asset value of $10 billion, of which roughly 40% was in Russian companies and 60% was in international businesses. In mid-2022, the investors in Baring Vostok funds approved a restructuring plan to divest their remaining Russian investments, severing the Russian nexus from the group. Transaction documents to implement the sale were signed in March 2023, and the transaction closed in April 2024 after receiving the required regulatory approvals.
As part of the restructuring, Baring Vostok was divided into two separate and independent firms: Vostok Investments, which is owned by the former Russian managers of Baring Vostok and which purchased substantially all of the Russian assets from the Baring Vostok funds; and Baring Ventures, which manages the international assets that remain as part of the group, the most significant of which is in Kaspi, now listed on NASDAQ. Baring Ventures has no Russian shareholders or employees. Similarly, none of Baring Ventures' team (including Mike Calvey) have an interest in Vostok Investments or the former Russian assets which were sold by Baring Vostok funds.
The Baring funds continue to be owned by the former limited partners of Baring Vostok funds (institutional investors from the USA, UK, EU, Middle East and Asia).