Early career
Prior to graduate school, he worked as an analyst for Exxon, a management consultant for KPMG, and defense analyst at The RAND Corporation, a public policy think tank. After receiving his MBA from Stanford Business School, Polovets moved to New York to work at the global headquarters of Ernst & Young, where he was responsible for establishing the company's consulting business in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
In 1992, he established RPI Group, a boutique communications and consulting firm focused on the Russian energy sector. Until the company’s sale in 1998, he served as its CEO and was an advisor to the minister of oil and gas of Turkmenistan and to the general director of Mazeikiu Nafta, Lithuania’s national oil company. RPI’s two flagship publications, Russian Petroleum Investor and Caspian Investor, continue to be published by Thomson Reuters.[13]
TNK-BP and AAR
In 2001, Polovets joined Tyumen Oil Company (TNK), an emerging Russian oil producer, as vice president of mergers and acquisitions. In 2002–2003 Polovets represented TNK in a $15 billion merger with BP that led to the establishment of TNK-BP. The merger became the largest corporate transaction in Russia and the single largest foreign investment in a Russian company at that time. The company established as a result of this merger eventually became one of the world’s ten largest non-state oil producers, comparable in size with such companies as Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Statoil. It operated in Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Venezuela and Vietnam.[14]
Between 2003 and 2006 Polovets held a number of senior executive posts in the TNK-BP Group, including senior vice president and chief of staff to TNK-BP’s president Bob Dudley, later the CEO of BP.[15]
In 2006 Polovets briefly left the TNK-BP Group to become first vice president of Uralsib, a major Russian financial institution. In 2007 Polovets became the CEO of the Alfa-Access-Renova (AAR) Consortium, which held a 50% stake in TNK-BP. In that capacity, he represented AAR on the board and board committees of TNK-BP, as well as its key subsidiaries and affiliates, including Slavneft (a joint venture with Gazpromneft) and TNK Trading International (TTI, an international trading subsidiary).[16][17]
In 2011, Polovets was involved in AAR’s legal battle against BP, which was also a 50% shareholder in TNK-BP. AAR filed a lawsuit seeking to block BP's strategic alliance with Rosneft in a bid to access Russia's Arctic reserves and bypass TNK-BP.[18][19]
AAR won an injunction from the High Court of London that blocked BP from entering a strategic alliance and executing a share swap with Rosneft. The Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal made a similar ruling, upholding AAR’s position and preventing BP’s attempted alliance with Russia’s state-owned company. AAR’s successful bid to block the BP-Rosneft alliance paved the way for AAR’s cash-out from TNK-BP two years later.[20][21]
In 2013, in his capacity as CEO of AAR, Polovets was involved in executing the sale of AAR’s 50% stake in TNK-BP to Rosneft for $28 billion. BP also sold its TNK-BP stake to Rosneft in a parallel transaction, making the $55 billion sale of TNK-BP the largest M&A deal in Russia’s history, and the largest M&A transaction in the global energy sector in a decade. Between 2003 and 2013, AAR shareholders received more than $20 billion in dividends from TNK-BP and saw the value of its stake grow from $7.5 billion to $28 billion, making it one of the most successful investments in the history of the oil and gas industry.[3]
From May 2013 until December 2019, Polovets served as the lead non-executive director for L1 Energy, the international investment vehicle of Alfa Group.
From May 2014 through October 2016, Polovets served as the chairman for Russia and Eastern Europe at Edelman, the largest global PR firm.[22][23]
From September 2014 until March 2020, Polovets served as senior advisor to Access Industries, a privately held industrial group with long-term holdings in natural resources, chemicals, media, telecoms and real estate, owned by American entrepreneur and philanthropist Len Blavatnik. Polovets represented Access as the lead non-executive director on the board of directors of, a major Israeli holding company with a diversified portfolio of investments in industrial manufacturing, hi-tech and consumer sectors.[24][25]
