Joël Lautier

Born in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada in 1973, Lautier first major success came in 1986, when he won the World Under-14 Championship.[1] He earned his international master title in 1988, also winning the World Junior Chess Championship that year. He was awarded his grandmaster title in 1990. He won the French Chess Championships in 2004 and 2005.[2] He competed in the Chess World Cup 2005, where he was eliminated in the fourth round by Étienne Bacrot.

Lautier is one of the founders of the Association of Chess Professionals, and served as its president from 2004 to 2005.

He was a second to Vladimir Kramnik in the Classical World Chess Championship 2000 against Garry Kasparov.[3]

As of 2009, Lautier no longer classified himself as a chess professional, but as a businessman working in Russia. He speaks fluent Russian.

Later divorced, he was married to Moldovian Woman Grandmaster Almira Skripchenko from 1997 to 2002.[4]

After his professional playing career he turned to business in 2006 and made use of his connections to Russia which he found useful. He founded his own mergers and acquisitions consultancy RGG (Russia goes global) which specialised in buying and selling assets in Russia. He also studied at Skolkovo management school in Moscow. He advised several large Russian companies in oil, electricity and pharmaceuticals sectors and acted as a non-executive director for Evropeyskaya Elektrotekhnica, a Russian electronics company. In 2020 he became a non-executive director and member of the supervisory board of the Russian bank Sovcombank. For that reason USA added him in March 2022 to the list of sanctioned people over the war in Ukraine. The same day Anatoly Karpov was added to the US sanctions list with Lautier. French business newspaper Les Echos called US sanctioning Lautier "bizarre" and noted him having already resigned from his position in the bank in 25 February, the day after the bank itself was placed on the sanctions list. [5]

• Joel Lautier player profile and games at Chessgames.com