About Igor Zaks

Tenzor Ltd provides consultancy and interim management for corporate restructurings, financial and risk management, working capital and supply chain strategy.

The Team

Igor Zax (Zaks), founder and the President of Tenzor Ltd. is a seasoned finance professional, combining experience in banking, blue chip corporate and consulting. He has worked in a wide range of financial instruments, industries and functions. His clients include Fortune 100 companies, major banks, private equity companies and multilateral institutions.

Igor started his career in in 1990, first in consulting, and then as Finance Director for a high tech company. He subsequently moved to Citibank, initially working in project finance before setting up and running its first research department in Russia. He was instrumental in the Emerging Market Strategy task-force looking at market developments and Citibank’s strategic positioning. After moving to Citibank London in 1996, Igor set up market strategy research for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa. He then joined the Principal Finance team in Daiwa, where he was responsible for a series of innovative deals across a range of markets and industries.

In 2000 Igor moved to Dell, where his first job was turning around the credit and trade finance function for EMEA Distribution, which until then was widely seen as an inhibitor for growth. After a complete re-engineering of structure and processes, the business was able to more than double sales without a single loss. He was also instrumental in driving change in major Dell distributors in the region. On the strength of these achievements, Igor was promoted to review overall receivables financing across Europe, which led to a reduction in cost by 80% and a significant improvement in controls and business alignment. In both roles, Igor designed a number of innovative structures, working with credit insurers, banks and other finance providers. He also re-designed the procurement framework in the financial services space, leading to savings of $ 7 million within 6 month (in areas like credit card acquisition, accidental damage and theft insurance, etc.). He went on to risk and financing for EMEA regional businesses and for the UK.

Igor then moved as a director to Eurohypo / Commerzbank, undertaking traditional public finance transactions as well as driving expansion into new asset classes, such as receivables, leases and export credit agencies.

From Nov 2006 to May 2009 he was  a Managing Partner in SCF Capital, a specialised boutique in supply chain financing and its applications (one of the other Managing Partners was John Sculley, former CEO of Apple), where he was in charge of all aspects of deal structuring, and was actively involved in various projects with corporates and financial institutions.

Igor received his MSc in Physics from Novosibirsk State University, Sloan Fellowship MSc (with distinction) from London Business School and GPLLM (Global Professional Master in Laws) from the University of Toronto. He holds a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) qualification.