Russian magazine Finans published its 2011 rating of Russian billionaires on Monday. For the second year in a row, the title of the richest Russian went to Vladimir Lisin (estimated wealth of $28.3 billion), Chairman of the Board of steel producer NLMK. Mikhail Prokhorov, President of investment fund Onexim Group, kept his second place slot with $22.7 billion.
The biggest surprise is that Roman Abramovich, co-founder of Millhouse Capital, has been replaced from the third position he held in 2010 and is now only fifth-wealthiest Russian. This is the first time since Mr. Abramovich has been outside Finans’ top three since its rankings began in 2004, Financial Times notes. Finans argues that the decline in Mr. Abramovich’s ranking (his 2010 wealth totals $17.1 billion, which represents almost no change compared to 2009) is due to the costly maintenance of his investments, which include the British soccer club Chelsea.
The third position is now held by Alisher Usmanov, founder of Metalloinvest, who ranked seventh last year. Finans argues that Mr. Usmanov’s success is explained by his investments in Mail.Ru (formerly known as DST), whose 2010 IPO was a success. Mr. Usmanov is followed by Oleg Deripaska, owner of Basic Element, whose position has improved by two points.
One of the significant features of this year’s rating is the presence of owners of social media, namely VKontakte owner Vyacheslav Mirilashvili (#140), VKontakte’s founder Pavel Durov (#350), the creator of Mamba and the British social network Baboo Andrei Andreev (#366), and creator of Odnoklassniki Albert Popkov (#404), .
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Deripaska · Digital Sky Technologies · Prokhorov · Russia · Usmanov
