OREANDA-NEWS. December 18, 2014. CEO and Chairman of the Board of Sberbank Herman Gref held the annual Direct Line with Sberbank Group employees. This year the event, which was called “Open Dialogue”, took place at Sberbank’s corporate university.

By the start of the event, Herman Gref had already received 2,500 questions through email, hotline, SMS and twitter – a record for the event’s five year history. Sberbank Group employees asked another 1,700 questions during the Direct Line.

16 Regional Banks, subsidiary banks in Europe, Turkey and CIS countries, and Sberbank subsidiaries and affiliates tuned in to the broadcast from Sberbank’s corporate university. The Direct Line was broadcast in Russian and English. The event lasted about four hours.

“Sberbank’s priority tasks for 2015 include a sharp increase in efficiency, managers’ personal responsibility for the quality of assets, focus on attracting funds, quality of client service, employee development through mentoring, and development of our corporate culture,” said Herman Gref. “Creating a single corporate culture is our most difficult task. How successful we will be depends on our ability to implement this task.”

Herman Gref’s annual Direct Line with Sberbank employees began in 2010.