Friday, April 20, 2007

[russia's richest] no great changes

From Mosnews [unabridged]:

According to the Forbes magazine’s annual survey of the wealthiest 100 Russians, which was published on Thursday, April 19, Roman Abramovich is still Russia’s richest citizen. He has a fortune of $19.2 billion.

Abramovich’s No.1 spot was untroubled by his divorce earlier this year, which under Russian law could have cost him half his fortune and left both him and his ex-wife Irina in equal 11th place in the rankings.

Behind the 40-year-old soccer patron was a chasing pack of oil and metals magnates led by aluminium tycoon Oleg Deripaska with $16.8 billion, mainly the beneficiaries of Russia’s swift privatization of its huge natural resources in the 1990s.

In 55th place, with $1.1 billion, was Boris Berezovsky, a Kremlin power-broker under President Boris Yeltsin who fell foul of his successor, Vladimir Putin, and now lives in political asylum in London.

Berezovsky said he had sold all his former Russian assets and now kept his money in bank accounts and liquid assets.

Names from outside the natural resources sectors still made up only a smattering of entries on the list, showing that Russia has a mountain to climb if it wants to achieve Putin’s dream of diversifying the economy away from oil and metals.

As in previous years only one woman made the top 100 — Yelena Baturina, the wife of Moscow’s mayor. Her wealth, based on the Inteko construction company, is now $3.1 billion, Forbes said.

Forbes said the list included people who had accumulated most of their money through business and were not in government service. It did not elaborate.

3 comments:

  1. So you must be one of the richest in the Expat Blogger Category.

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  2. Well some people can make money anywhere and very quickly too. Those figures are remarkable.
    Incidentally Canada is a country whose wealth is practically all oil and material resources, mainly metals. More than 50 % of the market cap of the stock exchange is in oil and gas and material stocks. Luckily all are relatively high at the moment, but the swings on our market that follow a drop in oil or gold are interesting indeed.
    jmb

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