James Cook (American banker)

Cook worked in marketing for the Virginia Tech Credit Union while he was in college.^[1] He subsequently worked as a loan officer for the Investors Savings Bank in Richmond.^[1] By 1988, he joined the Virginia Housing Development Authority as a compliance officer.^[1]

Cook went to work as deputy director of the Urban Institute in Russia in 1994,^[1] where he was tasked with teaching Russian bankers about mortgages.^[3] He began working for Delta Capital Management in 1996,^[3] only to be promoted as its senior vice president in 2000.^[4] Meanwhile, by 1999, he also served as the senior vice president of The U.S. Russia Investment Fund (TUSRIF),^[5] an investment fund managed by Delta Capital.

Cook offered his first mortgage at the Delta Capital Management in 1997.^[3] As most Russians had never taken loans before, Cook and other bankers turned to ex-KGB officers to do background checks for them.^[1][6]

Cook was appointed as the chairman and chief executive officer of GE Consumer Finance, a Russia-based subsidiary of General Electric, in 2004.^[3] He also served on the boards of directors of OSG, Unistream, Fora Bank, Kreditmart, DeltaBank, DeltaCredit, Europlan, Flexinvest Bank, and the ICICI Bank in Russia.^[2]

Cook co-founded Aurora Russia Limited, a private equity firm,^[7] in 2006.^[3] The firm attracted $150 million,^[3] and it was listed on the Alternative Investment Market, a submarket of the London Stock Exchange, until 2016.^[8] Meanwhile, the two men created three businesses with the fund,^[3] including KreditMart, a mortgage and consumer loan firm.^[9]

Cook believes that the 1998 Russian financial crisis "was the best thing that could have happened" to Russian banks, as it taught them to diversify their assets.^[4] He is known as the "father of mortgage lending" in Russia.^[10]

On October 4, 2015, Cook hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign at his Paris residence.^[11][12][13]