EM, the financial communications agency of choice for clients from emerging markets, has expanded its market-leading team of financial PR and IR professionals with the addition of former Bloomberg emerging markets reporter Maria Levitov and Dmitry Zhadan from Polyus Gold’s highly regarded IR team.

Levitov joins EM’s London headquarters, and brings more than a decade’s experience of covering capital markets and corporate news at Bloomberg News in London, during which time she interviewed CEOs of leading corporates and key policymakers from across global emerging markets. As a government and economy reporter in Moscow she covered key institutions including the Finance Ministry, Central Bank and Economy Ministry. Before joining Bloomberg, Levitov was a staff writer at the Moscow Times, and began her career in research at Corporate Executive Board in Washington, D.C.

Zhadan, who joins the EM team in Moscow, has more than five years of working in IR and capital markets for leading Russian companies. At Polyus Gold he was a key member of the IR practice and was involved in a number of major capital markets transactions including delisting from the London Stock Exchange, an SPO in Moscow and a number of local and Eurobond placements. Before Polyus, Zhadan worked at Sberbank Russia on M&A transactions and in the IR team at fertilizer producer Acron.

Tom Blackwell, CEO of EM, says, “Maria and Dmitry are dynamite additions to our team, and bring just the kind of expertise that we need as we continue to build the dominant capital markets business in our core market.  It’s a particularly important time to be expanding in this way as the Russian market is coming back to life, and we are now positioned to reap the rewards of having continued to invest over the past three years.”

In June, EM established a permanent presence in Beijing with the hire of former CGTN business reporter Laura Luo. In May the agency was shortlisted for 'EMEA financial PR consultancy of the year' by the Holmes Report, and in June was shortlisted by Communicate Magazine in the Corporate & Financial Awards as 'Agency of the Year,' and for 'Best IPO Communications' (Detsky Mir).