Babayev Ruslan Salmanovich

Babayev Ruslan Salmanovich

Biography

2023: Appointment as CEO of PGK

In November 2023, Ruslan Babayev, one of the two sons of the former vice president of Russian Railways Salman Babaev, became the new general director of the First Freight Company (PGK). In this post, he replaced Sergei Karataev.

The fact that the board of directors of the PGK elected Babayev as the new head of the company was written by Kommersant with reference to the notification that was sent to the counterparties of the railway transportation operator. The PGK itself confirmed the appointment. According to the newspaper, Sergey Karataev, who resigned from the post of general director of PGK by the end of November 2023, is considered as a likely successor as president of NLMKGrigory Fedorishin, who headed the metallurgical holding since 2018.

According to the general director of Infoline-Analytics, Mikhail Burmistrov, he notes that the Babaev family knows the operating market well and that the new owners are closely immersed in the company's operating activities will have a positive effect on business, especially from the point of view of the development of new areas. PGK has a strong competitive advantage: the company leads in the field of IT among operators and has high operational and financial efficiency, the expert believes.

In his opinion, Ruslan Babayev, having headed the PGK, will have to reduce the bureaucratization of the company's commercial function, which will strengthen the sales team and more efficiently attract new customers. The company needs to strengthen its position in the market of multimodal container transportation, where the factors of flexibility and customer orientation are critical, added Burmistrov.

President of the National Research Center for Transportation and Infrastructure Pavel Ivankin, in a conversation with the publication, noted that the Babaev family "has proven itself well in the transport industry."^[1]

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