Secretive steel baron tops Russian rich list

[MikeWB]

Secretive steel baron tops Russian rich list
Sun Feb 14, 2010 6:06pm GMT Print | Single Page [-] Text

(Release at 0300 GMT, Monday Feb. 15)



By Dmitry Zhdannikov

MOSCOW, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Steel baron Vladimir Lisin, ranked Russia's richest man, has been in some of the fiercest battles fought among the country's oligarchs but has done it so discreetly that even most Russians barely know his name.

A keen huntsman and connoisseur of Cuban cigars, Lisin can be more often seen with a shotgun in hunting magazines than in business dailies.

With a personal wealth of $18.8 billion and top place in a Russian "rich list" published by the Finans business magazine, Lisin is unlikely to escape the limelight in future.

His fortune is worth half of Microsoft founder Bill Gates' $40 billion, the world's biggest, according to U.S. Forbes magazine. Finans publishes its list two months before the benchmark Russian Forbes edition, which last year ranked Lisin 93rd on the global list with $5.2 billion.

Lisin's name means "fox" in Russian, and his acquaintances say the phenomenal success of the multi-billionaire can be largely explained by the fact that he has never upset the government or the Kremlin.

Lisin, 53, is a rare example of a career steel man becoming a king in Russia's fragmented steel industry, which is mostly run by financiers after chaotic sell-offs in the 1990s.

A graduate of a Siberian steel institute and a senior steel plant manager in the late 1980s, he had to learn fast after the Soviet Union's demise was followed by what is often tagged "the sale of the century" of state assets in the 1990s.

As a junior partner of the powerful Cherney brothers, Mikhail and Lev, Lisin helped their TransWorldGroup (TWG), a metals trader with links to the political elite in President Boris Yeltsin's Russia, gain control of some of the country's most lucrative metals assets.

BATTLES

They included steel, aluminium and copper plants. The way they were acquired, through sometimes violent battles, is known in Russia as the "aluminium wars" of the 1990s.

As TWG's fortunes faded and partners began to quarrel at the end of the 1990s, he set himself to acquiring one of the country's most modern steel plants, in Lipetsk.

He had to fight another round of battles, including with nickel king Vladimir Potanin, and buy out a large stake from U.S. financier George Soros to finally gain control over Lipetsk.

Lipetsk, also known as NLMK, floated stock in London in 2005, and posted quarterly profits of billions of dollars, becoming a big steel exporter to China and trying to buy large steel assets in the United States.

As NLMK's business roared, Lisin became less and less of a public figure.

He was said to have bought assets in the West but the purchases appear modest compared to the yachts and football clubs of some Russian oligarchs.

In 2005, British media reported that Lisin had spent 6.8 million pounds ($10.5 million) on a 16th-century Scottish castle.

Married with 3 children, he has built one of Russia's biggest clay pigeon shooting centres. His retreat, "the Fox's Den", has welcomed top visitors, including Russia's most influential politician, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. (Reporting and writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; editing by Andrew Roche)