While at university, Melnichenko began his entrepreneurial ventures opening a currency exchange booth on the campus. Having made their first US$50,000 through a chain of the currency exchange booths, Melnichenko and his partners, two like-minded fellow students, received a banking licence from the Bank of Russia. In 1993, at the age of 21, Melnichenko co-founded the MDM Bank which grew to become one of Russia's largest private banks within ten years. The bank moved onto buying currency at the interbank foreign exchange, developing a derivatives market and debt instruments. From 1993 to 1997, Melnichenko chaired the Board of Directors of MDM Bank. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, MDM Bank expanded through acquisition, integrating seven regional banks. MDM Bank did not participate in any post-Soviet privatization programs or the loans-for-shares auctions of the 1990s. In 1997, Melnichenko bought out MDM Bank shares from his partners and became the sole shareholder of the Bank and the Chairman of the Management Board. It gradually became one of Russia's largest private banks, based on total assets, and the first in book running of Russian corporate Eurobonds. Bloomberg reported that "unlike many bigger rivals, MDM came through the 1998 crisis nearly unscathed, thanks to a conservative credit policy, the lack of illiquid assets and no exposure to government bonds. As competitors went under, the lender snagged some of the biggest Russian companies as clients." From 2001 to 2005, he chaired MDM Bank's Board of Directors. MDM Bank was named the "Bank of the Year" by The Banker in 2002 and 2003. In 2003, Euromoney and, in 2004, Global Finance, named it the "Best Russian Bank".