A French national of Eastern European parentage, he spent the first part of his life in Latin America, before leaving to do his undergraduate work at the University of California followed by advanced degrees in Neurophysiology at the University of Paris VI – Jussieu. After several years in biological research, he left the public sector to build one of France’ first independent pharmaceutical industry consultancy services, Kraus Biomedical, sold as a very successful going entity, profitable and with 12 staff in the mid-1990s.

After beginning his financial career as an advisor in Latin American distressed debt in 1991, Mr. Kraus joined Société Générale, Paris in 1995 – initially covering Latin American bonds as Chief Brady Strategist. With the rapid growth of trading in Russian markets, his primary focus shifted to the analysis and trading of cash and options on the first post-Soviet Russian Debt Instruments.

After repeated visits to Russia, Mr. Kraus left Société Générale to move to Moscow in early October 1997, taking a position as Strategist for Regent European Securities. He promptly became controversial with his strongly bearish predictions as regards the sustainability of the Russian economic montage. In spring 1998, sensing the rapidly approaching storm which was to devastate the local financial entities, he joined Dresdner KB as Moscow Head of Fixed Income. In late September – a little more than a month after the August Crash – he issued his first “Buy” recommendation on Russian Eurobonds (Rf28, MinFins, Tatneft), persuading a number of clients, as well as Dresdner London traders, that Russian financial markets were seeing not an end, but a new beginning.

Given the very limited Russian risk appetite of European institutions in the late 1990s, in 1999 Mr. Kraus joined the Russian bank/brokerage Nikoil as Managing Director and Chief Equity Strategist; he has worked solely for Russian entities since that time. During his mandate, Nikoil developed a diversified international clientele – primarily in the blue-chip assets, gaining recognition for a number of initially controversial trading calls, including the first “Buy” recommendations for Yukos oil company – at a time when it was still excluded from the RTS trading system and was trading at about 50 cents.

Mr. Kraus left Nikoil in 2002 to join the new Sovlink LLC as Head of Equities/Chief Strategist (following the Sovlink merger with Bank Aljba-Alliance) with a mandate to build Russia’s first mainstream small-/mid-cap equity brokerage. Sovlink proved a pioneer and market leader in this new business, opening up several new investment sectors with a series of highly successful trading calls included “Buy” recommendations (>x10 upsides) on Russian chemicals and fertilizers (Uralkaliy, etc), the Bashkir refining complex and the pipe rollers, as well as small-cap oils, steels, mines, etc. He continued to issue his renowned and always-controversial strategy updates – renamed Truth and Beauty (…and Russian Finance) – which he continues to issue as strategy monthly.

In 2005, Mr. Kraus relinquished his sell-side role to assume management of Sovlink’s new asset management activity, successfully managing a diversified emerging markets proprietary account, LCC, as well as continuing the proprietary Russian equity mandate which he began in 1999. He left Sovlink in March of 2006 to launch the Nikitsky Fund.

Mr. Kraus lives in the Chystie Prudy area of Moscow, and besides being an enthusiastic practitioner of Iyangar Yoga and an avid ballet fan, remains a keen and deeply committed observer of Russia’s historic transformation. An early and still-enthusiastic supporter of President Vladimir Putin, he remains fundamentally bullish about the evolution of Russia into a significant economic and political force in Eurasia, as well as a middle-income European economy, with an income structure comparable to the EU states.

Besides appearing on network television more than 200 times, he is a regular conference speaker, advisor to the French embassy in Moscow, and has been extensively quoted in the financial and general press. His writings can be freely downloaded from the Nikitsky Website – www.nikitskyfund.com.