Mikhail Fridman

Mikhail Maratovich Fridman (also transliterated Mikhail Friedman; Михаил Маратович Фридман; מיכאיל פרידמן; born 21 April 1964) is a Ukrainian-born, Russian–Israeli tycoon.

He is one of the co-founders of Alfa-Group, a multinational Russian conglomerate.

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 was 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.

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.

Having studied metallurgical engineering, he graduated with distinction from the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys in 1986.

After graduation Fridman worked as a metallurgical design engineer at the Elektrostal Metallurgical Works, a state electrical machinery factory, from 1986 to 1988.

In 1988, along with German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev, Fridman co-founded Alfa-Photo (also transliterated as Alfa-Foto), which imported photography chemicals.

In 1989 the three partners founded Alfa-Eco (Alfa-Echo, Alfa-Eko, Alfa-Ekho), a commodities and eventually oil trading firm, and Alfa Capital (Alfa Kapital), 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.

In 1991, he co-founded Alfa-Bank, one of the largest private banks in Russia.

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.

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".

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.

Armenian Robert Yengibaryan (Роберт Енгибарян) provided strong assistance to Fridman and, later, Yengibaryan's son Vahe Yengebaryan (Ваге Енгибарян), who was the Russian consul in New York from 2003 onwards, became very close to Fridman's business interests.

According to Forbes, he was the second-richest Russian as of 2013 ($16,5 billion), moving down to ninth-richest Russian in 2023 ($12.6 billion).

After serving as 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 (L1).

Until 2022 Fridman was chairman of the supervisory board of Alfa Group Consortium, and also served on the boards of Alfa-Bank and ABH Holdings.

Prior to 2022, he was on the supervisory board of directors for VEON (formerly Vimpelcom) 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".

Subsequently, the agency scaled back its probe.

In September 2023 the National Crime Agency closed the investigation.

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.

In October 2019, Fridman told a Spanish court that he was a friend of Vahe.