President & Chief Executive Officer
Kit Capital

TRIUM Global Executive MBA, Class of 2005
Diploma, Master of Business Administration

Stonehill College
Diploma, Accounting

Prior to joining TRIUM term project KIT Capital, Mr. Bush spent 14 years at Verizon Communications, the largest telecom company in the United States, where he held various positions including Executive Director of Human Resources for Romtelecom, Romanian National Phone Company. His most recent position was Executive Director for Financial & Performance Assurance, with responsibilities for all financial and performance metric requirements for Verizon’s Human Resources Organization.

It was after his return to the United States from Romania—and to what in the interim had become Verizon Communications—that Mark began to act on his long-held ambition to obtain an MBA. He evaluated several of the top programs in the country and chose TRIUM primarily because of its consortium structure. “I also knew that, in effect, I’d be graduating from all three schools and would be part of an extraordinarily powerful triple network of alumni.” Although Mark’s motives for pursuing an MBA were more personal than job-oriented, the TRIUM network would soon have an impact on his professional life that he could not have foreseen when he began the Program in 2003.

About halfway through the TRIUM Program, Mark decided to leave Verizon in the wake of another post-merger reorganization within the firm. He announced his decision to his fellow TRIUM students at the Paris module in late June 2004. At that point, Mark wasn't even thinking of looking for a new job, but coincidentally, one of the TRIUM project teams (not Mark’s) had just laid the foundation for a new company—Kit Capital—designed to bring quality retail space to the growing middle classes in provincial Russia. According to Mark, “TRIUM was a living laboratory for Kit Capital. The concept was developed by Timur Goryayev’s project team and the firm was founded and capitalized by team members and other Russian and European investors.”

During the Brazil module the following October, Timur, well aware of Mark’s talents and managerial experience in Romania, approached him with a proposition: would he be interested in moving to Russia and running Kit Capital as President and CEO? The rest, as Mark says, “Is history.” A great opportunity was presented to me at Kit Capital, one that I would not have gotten had I not attended TRIUM and been able to establish relationships with business leaders and entrepreneurs like Timur, who were my TRIUM colleagues. Sometimes you do get happy surprises even when you’re not looking for them.”

Q. Could you elaborate on the KIT Capital project team and your interaction with them?

Mark Bush:
“I was not on the project team that designed KIT Capital. The (TRIUM Class of 2005) team members were Timur Goryayev, Nikolay Geller, Frederic Gaspoz, Christophe Clave and Chris Burggraeve. The concept was developed and the project and company were founded and developed in parallel. The company was founded in April 2004 with an initial capitalization of $30 million. As the project developed the team began to understand the great potential of the company and determined that the current CEO was not of a sufficient caliber to develop the company as they envisioned. Timur Goryayev is one of the significant contributors to the capital of the company and approached me during a TRIUM module in Brazil and asked me if I would be interested in coming to Russia and running Kit Capital – The rest, as is said, is history. In short, I had nothing to do with the creation of Kit Capital, however I was handed the concept and company to make it happen. The business itself is straight forward: There is large growth of middle class in provincial Russia and the retail market in Moscow is becoming saturated. KIT- Capital founded on the belief that large chain stores, both foreign and domestic, that wish to continue to grow will need to look to the provinces for that growth. There has been a lack of quality retail space in Russia’s provincial cities – a market white space. The Kit Capital Concept: build the infrastructure that facilitates chain store expansion to the provinces – become the "chain for the chains.”

Q. The Kit Capital web site (www.kit-capital.ru) is very informative, but let me know if there is anything further you'd like to add, or any particular points about the company you'd like to stress?

Mark Bush:
“At present, the company manages 6 SECs with the total area of more than 100,000 square meters.

The main points of Kit Capital is that we have a very aggressive expansion plan to construct and manage over 1 million square meters of retail space within three years. Over half of that growth will come from small cities where there is no competition for our offering. Think of a business, outside of regulated monopolies, where over 50% of your addressable market is not subject to competition and where the first mover advantage basically gives you a natural monopoly for the foreseeable future. Most people I know would say that that is a business they would want to be in. “