Under Mr Gref the bank has become, by nearly all measures save ownership, a modern financial institution. Profitability compares very well with European banks partly because the economic picture is brighter in Russia and partly because the bank's funding costs are so low as a result of limited competition in the regions. Sberbank has more than 70m retail customers in a country of 142m people, many of them pensioners and civil servants who worry more about safety than the interest on their deposits.
