Vladislav Doronin

Vladislav Yurievich Doronin (Владислав Юрьевич Доро́нин; born 7 November 1962) is a Russian-born oligarch, real estate developer and art collector.

He is the owner and chairman of Aman Resorts, chairman and CEO of OKO Group and is a co-founder of Moscow-based Capital Group.

Vladislav Doronin was born on 7 November 1962 in Leningrad, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (now Saint Petersburg, Russia) in a Russian family of Yuri Grigoryevich Doronin (born 15 September 1937) and Zinaida Mikhailovna Doronina (born 2 October 1935).

He graduated from the Moscow Lomonosov State University.

In 1985 he relocated to Geneva and then to Zug, Switzerland, where he worked under Marc Rich.

In his twenties, Doronin also worked in Hong Kong trading commodities in the late 80s and early 90s.

In 1993 Doronin co-founded Capital Group, which entered the Moscow commercial real estate market with class A offices and retail projects, and later expanded with other premium residential developments.

Doronin's equal partners in Capital Group from the early 90s were Pavel Tio and Eduard Berman.

Capital Group has built up its portfolio to include 71 high-end residential and commercial projects with a total of 7,000,000 m2 of space.

In 2009 Doronin's Capital Group built the City of Capitals mixed-use (office and residential) complex in Moscow City, which consisted of two highrise towers and until 2011 was the highest building in Russia.

The complex was designed by Erick van Egeraat.

In 2011 Capital Group built the award-winning Legend of Tsvetnoy residential, office and retail complex in Moscow.

The complex was designed by NBBJ.

In 2013 Doronin's Capital Group formed a joint venture with Gavriil Yushvaev, a Russian entrepreneur, for the construction of OKO — a mixed-use (commercial and residential) highrise development in the Moscow International Business Center.

Doronin led a group of investors to buy out luxury hospitality company Aman Resorts in 2014.

In doing so, Doronin became involved in an ownership dispute with Omar Amanat and Aman's founder, Adrian Zecha.

Amanat had partnered with both Zecha and Doronin to buy Aman, and had been expected to contribute $10 million for a jointly-funded deposit.

In early January, Doronin received a financial statement showing the money was from Zecha instead.

The partnership then fell apart: in April, Zecha announced his resignation as CEO and chairman ahead of a scheduled end-of-July departure, and Doronin took over as CEO.

A week later, Zecha was locked out of his office and was also removed from his Aman-owned home, after which he and Amanat claimed ownership of the company.

By July, the dispute had escalated into legal matters, with a London High Court temporarily reinstating Zecha, and Doronin suing Amanat in New York City and alleging fraud.

Johan Eliasch, president of International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), was an investor in Aman Resorts since 2014, loaning the company 25 million dollars and investing another 25 million.

In 2014–18 Eliasch served as chair of Aman's board of directors and held a 14% stake in the company.

FIS chose Aspen for the Men's World Cup skiing races in May 2022, two months after Doronin's acquisition of a prime land lot in Aspen and 8 months after the election of Eliasch as president of FIS.

Doronin partnered with Michael Shvo in 2015 to buy floors 4 through 24 of the New York Crown Building in New York for about $500 million as an Aman development project.

In 2016, 55,000 m2 of office space in the OKO development was sold to the Government of Moscow.

In a February 2016 Forbes interview, Doronin explained that Capital Group is jointly managed by the three partners who take strategic decisions together.

The operational responsibilities are divided with Doronin responsible for asset sales and acquisitions, attracting investors, development of architectural concepts and marketing, Pavel Tio in charge of relations with the Moscow construction complex, new project and legal work and Berman focusing on fit-out and construction work in Capital Group projects.

In March 2022 Doronin sued The Real Deal for defamation.

The suit was filed after the magazine published articles about pro-Ukrainian protests near one of his hotel in Manhattan.

Doronin demanded $20 million in damages and claimed that the articles falsely stated that he was Russian and implied that he supported the Putin regime.

In April 2022 Doronin filed a defamation lawsuit Swift Communications, a holding company, which owns The Aspen Times after the newspaper published opinion pieces and a letter to the editor, which implied that Doronin was using his Aspen investment to launder tainted money from Russia.

Doronin asked for punitive damages to be imposed on Swift Communications, claiming that The Aspen Times "has chosen to … sensationalize a false narrative that targets Mr. Doronin simply because he was born in what is today Russia".

Until April 2022 he held a 33% stake in Capital Group valued at US$74.5 million.

He transferred the ownership in the company to his mother on 14 April, one day after he filed his lawsuit against The Aspen Times.

According to Doronin's court filings, he earned his wealth legitimately and could not be considered a Russian oligarch, because "oligarchs are not merely wealthy individuals of Russian origin; they are individuals who have amassed their wealth through the exploitation of Russian natural resources, corrupt direction of Russian state-owned enterprises, and close political affiliation with Vladimir Putin."

This description, the suit argued, does not fit Doronin.

During the pendency of the suit, coverage of Doronin was suspended by the publisher.

Tension over the matter resulted in firing of the editor, Andrew Travers.

The legal action was settled by confidential agreement and dismissed on 27 May 2022.