Page 32 - bne_Magazine_May_2017_print

32 I Cover story bne May 2017
Ihor Kolomoisky Ukraine (1)
Like many a self-respecting oligarch from the former Soviet Union, Jewish-Ukrainian banking and media mogul Ihor Kolomoisky owns a sports club – Ukraine’s FC Dnipro, writes Nick Allen. But despite his peers’ often superior wealth (Kolomoisky’s dropped to $1bn-$1.5bn from almost $4bn in 2007), few can say they fielded their own private army of 20,000 paramilitaries.
It also might partly explain why Kolo- moisky, 54, and his business partner Hen- nady Boholyubov are unlikely to answer for some $5bn in related party lending by their flagship asset, PrivatBank, before its nationalisation last December.
President Petro Poroshenko stripped him of his post of Dnipropetrovsk governor in March 2015 and had his volunteer battalion disbanded. The simultane-
ous severance of Kolomoisky’s de facto grasp on revenues of state oil pipeline operator UkrTransNafta nearly sparked a conflict in Kyiv between his armed musclemen and the central powers.
Kolomoisky and his partner started PrivatBank with $1mn in capital in the early 1990s. The bank grew to become
a systemically important institution, handling more than a third of private deposits and serving approximately half of the country's entire population.Their Privat Group retains other assets, includ- ing gas stations and oil refineries, while from his seat in Switzerland Kolomoisky controls a wider business empire of airlines and several Ukrainian TV chan- nels through his 1+1 Media Group.
As a prominent supporter of Jew-
ish causes who always seems to find the loopholes, Kolomoisky has triple Ukrainian-Israeli-Cyprus citizenship, despite a law penalising dual citizen- ship in Ukraine. By way of explanation, he has argued that, "The constitu-
tion prohibits double citizenship but triple citizenship is not forbidden."
Name Net worth Sector
UKRAINE
13
Oleg Deripaska
$5.4bn
Aluminium, cars, finance
Deripaska inherited Siberian Aluminum from Roman Abramovich and expanded it into Rusal. He has since accumulated many assets includ- ing the GAZ automobile works, the Ingosstrakh insurance company, as well as agricultural, energy and aviation assets. He intends to raise $2bn from an IPO of his EN+ energy company in London.
14
Arkady Rotenberg $2.8bn
Construction, pipes, finance
A longtime friend and judo sparring partner of President Vladimir Putin, Rotenberg (65) is the co-owner of energy construction group SGM.
He also owns 80% of the Minudobreniya nitric fertiliser producer and is an indirect stakeholder in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
15
Alexander Mamut $2.5bn
Finance
Mamut (57) has built up a series of holdings
in the financial sector, and has had stakes in fertiliser Uralkali, mining company Polymetal , Troika-Dialog investment bank and Ingosstrakh insurance company, construction company PIK Group, Evroset mobile phone chain and cel- lular operator Megafon. He is also the owner
of internet company Rambler & Co and British bookstore chain Waterstone's.
2
$4.2bn Metals
Rinat Akhmetov
Akhmetov (50) bought up mining assets during privatisations in the 1990s, taking over three quarters of Ukraine’s largest private company Metinvest Group, and founding SCM, a major financial and industrial holding. However, since February he has lost control of dozens of pro- duction facilities and enterprises of Metinvest and his DTEK energy company to rebels in East Ukraine.
3
Victor Pinchuk
$1.1bn
Steel products
Pinchuk (56) founded Interpipe, Ukraine’s lead- ing producer of steel products, a year before the 1991 Soviet collapse, later branching out into the media under former president (and father- in-law) Leonid Kuchma. However, his core business Interpipe is now saddled with heavy debts after losing all of its business in Russia following Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
4
$1bn
Confectionery, manufacturing, agriculture, finance, media
Petro Poroshenko
Poroshenko (51) purchased several confection- ery plants, uniting them in 1995 in the Roshen confectionery company, which earned him the nickname of 'Chocolate King'. He also has assets in manufacturing, shipbuilding, agri- culture, finance, and media, though since he became the country’s president in 2014, all of these are now officially under a blind trust.
www.bne.eu