Mikhail Fridman
Mikhail Maratovich Fridman is a Ukrainian-born, Russian–Israeli tycoon and oligarch. He is one of the co-founders of Alfa-Group, a multinational Russian conglomerate. According to Forbes, he was the second-richest Russian as of 2013, moving down to ninth-richest Russian in 2023. In May 2017, he was also ranked as Russia's most important businessman by bne IntelliNews.
In February 2024, Fridman had a net worth of $13.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
As per Forbes list of The Richest People In The World, dated 6 February 2025 Mikhail Fridman ranked #150 with a net worth of $13.3 Billion.
In 1991, he co-founded Alfa-Bank, one of the largest private banks in Russia. After being CEO of TNK-BP, the 50/50 TNK-BP joint venture, for nine years, in 2013 he sold his stake in the company and co-founded the international investment company LetterOne. Until 2022 Fridman was chairman of the supervisory board of Alfa Group Consortium, and was on the boards of Alfa-Bank and ABH Holdings.
Prior to 2022, he was on the supervisory board of directors for VEON and X5 Retail Group. He is a member of the supervisory board of DEA Deutsche Erdoel AG, which is owned by LetterOne. Fridman has been a member of numerous public-facing bodies, including the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the Public Chamber of Russia, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
In 2022, the EU imposed sanctions on Fridman in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Fridman claimed the EU's allegations were false and defamatory. He subsequently decided to step down from the boards of LetterOne and Alfa Group, so that they could avoid sanctions. As reported by several media, Fridman has already filed lawsuits challenging sanctions on at least two occasions, like in July 2022 and in December 2022.
In December 2022, a man reported by Russian state media to be Fridman was arrested in London by the UK's National Crime Agency, on charges of money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the Home Office and conspiracy to commit perjury. The UK National Crime Agency did not name the man, stating only that it had detained a 58-year-old "wealthy Russian businessman" at a "multi-million-pound residence". He was later released on bail. Subsequently, the agency scaled back its probe. In September 2023 the National Crime Agency closed the investigation.
In October 2023, Fridman reportedly announced to return to Russia.
Early life and education
Fridman was born in 1964 in Lviv, Ukrainian SSR, USSR, where he spent his youth. He graduated from high school in Lviv in 1980. He says he was denied entrance to Moscow's top physics college because he is Jewish, and instead attended the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys. He had various jobs while a college student in Moscow, including washing windows and founding and co-owning a student discothèque named Strawberry Fields. He also led a group of students who would queue for tickets at popular Moscow plays, and then use the tickets as hard currency to barter for rare goods and favours. Having studied metallurgical engineering, he graduated with distinction from the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys in 1986.Career
Early years and Alfa companies (1980s–1990s)
After graduation Fridman worked as a metallurgical design engineer at the Elektrostal Metallurgical Works, a state electrical machinery factory, from 1986 to 1988. As Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began to open up the economy in the late 1980s, in 1988 Fridman established a window-washing business, an apartment rental agency for foreigners, a company that sold used computers, and a company that imported cigarettes and perfumes, with fellow friends from college, employing students from various Moscow universities.Armenian Robert Yengibaryan provided strong assistance to Fridman and, later, Yengibaryan's son Vahe Yengebaryan, who was the Russian consul in New York from 2003 onwards, became very close to Fridman's business interests. In October 2019, Fridman told a Spanish court that he was a friend of Vahe.
In 1988, along with German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev, Fridman co-founded Alfa-Photo, which imported photography chemicals. In 1989 the three partners founded Alfa-Eco, a commodities and eventually oil trading firm, and Alfa Capital, an investment firm. Alfa-Eco and Alfa Capital developed into Alfa Group Consortium. The company, which initially focused on computer trading and copy machine maintenance, expanded into imports and exports and commodities trading, eventually becoming one of Russia's largest privately owned financial-industrial conglomerates, with interests in industries such as telecommunications, banking, retail, and oil.
Using $100,000 of his profits from his businesses to pay the required fee, in January 1991 Fridman co-founded Alfa-Bank. The company grew to become one of the largest private banks in Russia. Alfa Group's later divisions include Rosvodokanal, a private water utility; AlfaStrakhovanie, a diversified insurance company; A1 Group, an investment company; and X5 Retail Group, a large chain of food retailers.
Alfa Group flourished considerably after Fridman recruited Petr Aven, the former Minister of Foreign Economic Relations for the Russian Federation; in 1994 Aven became president and chairman of Alfa-Bank. By late 1996, thanks to the success of Alfa-Bank and Alfa Group, Boris Berezovsky, in an interview by the Financial Times, named Fridman and Aven among the seven businessman and bankers who controlled most of the economy and media in Russia, and who had helped bankroll Boris Yeltsin's 1996 re-election campaign. Both Fridman and Aven were quite close to Berezovsky. In his book The age of Berezovsky Aven says: "It was Fridman and I who happened to be by Boris's bed after his attempted assassination in 1994, and it was our yacht that he chose to go after being discharged from hospital".
Fridman and Aven sold off most of their Russian government securities in early August 1998, prior to the ruble crisis of 17 August 1998, and emerged relatively unhurt from the 1998 Russian financial crisis. During the crisis, Alfa-Bank used its holdings related to TNK to avoid a debt default, and was one of the few Russian banks at the time to continue to allow customer withdrawals.
Retail holdings and X5 Retail (1995 to present)
Fridman's Alfa Group founded the Perekrestok chain of supermarkets in Moscow in 1995. Through a merger with the Pyatyorochka supermarket chain, which had been founded in St. Petersburg in 1999 by Alexander Girda and Andrey Rogachev, Alfa Group founded the X5 Retail Group in 2006. X5 acquired another grocer, Kopeyka, for $1.65 billion in December 2010. X5 is Russia's largest food retailer in terms of sales.Alfa Telecom and Altimo (2001–2015)
Alfa Group acquired a 44% stake in Golden Telecom, a large telecommunications and internet company in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, in 2001. Also in 2001, Alfa purchased a strategic ownership interest in Vimpelcom, a large cellular operator in Russia, and Fridman joined Vimpelcom's board of directors.Alfa Group consolidated its telecom holdings as Alfa Telecom, and in 2005 renamed it Altimo. Its holdings and acquisitions included MegaFon, Vimpelcom, Golden Telecom, and Kyivstar. In December 2005 Altimo also acquired a 13.2% interest in Turkcell, the largest telecoms company in Turkey.
Fridman's desire to merge Vimpelcom and Kyivstar was thwarted by his Vimpelcom partner, the Norwegian telecoms group Telenor, which held stakes in both companies. Fridman resorted to protracted and aggressive efforts to strong-arm Telenor in 2005, and although the merger of Vimpelcom and Kyivstar was achieved in 2010, conflicts with Telenor over control of Vimpelcom lasted seven years in total.
From 2003 until 2007 Fridman's Altimo was locked in a complex four-year battle of claims and counter-claims of fraud with the Bermuda-based investment firm IPOC International Growth Fund associated with Leonid Reiman and Jeffrey Galmond over ownership of a 25.1% stake in MegaFon that was formerly held by Leonid Rozhetskin's LV Finance. James Hatt, a British telecommunications executive, represented Fridman's interests while Jeffrey Galmond, a Danish attorney, represented Reiman's interests during deliberations between the two groups. Altimo's ownership of the stake was finally maintained in 2007. During the dispute in 2005, Altimo hired the Haley Barbour-founded BGR public relations firm, which then hired a security firm, Richard Burt's Due Diligence, in order to infiltrate and obtain information about the KPMG independent investigations funded by Paula Cox, who was the Bermuda Minister of Finance, into the IPOC International Growth Fund. Richard Burt and Mikhail Fridman have a strong working relationship.
In 2012 Fridman sold his entire stake in MegaFon for $5 billion.
TNK-BP (2003–2013)
In 1997, Fridman had collaborated with Len Blavatnik and Viktor Vekselberg to purchase the state-owned TNK, an oil company in Siberia, for $800 million. In February 2003, the British multinational oil and gas company BP agreed to form the TNK-BP joint venture with the AAR consortium, which included Alfa Group, Blavatnik's Access Industries, and Vekselberg's Renova. After the merger, TNK-BP became the third largest oil producer in Russia, and one of the top 10 largest private oil companies in the world. Fridman was TNK-BP chairman for nine years, and CEO for three years.Prior to the TNK-BP joint venture, in 1999 Fridman had thwarted BP by seizing BP's stake in the Siberian oil company Sidanko, via bankruptcy maneuvers widely regarded as unfair practices. And although TNK-BP was highly successful financially, Fridman's relationship with BP during the TNK-BP years was contentious, and included blocking BP's 2011 planned partnership with Rosneft for Arctic oilfield exploration.
He resigned as CEO of TNK-BP in May 2012. In 2013, TNK-BP was sold to Russia's state-owned energy group Rosneft for $56 billion, with Fridman and his Russian partners receiving $28 billion for their 50% stake, at the height of crude oil prices.