The Russian whose fortune fell from the sky

Jules Evans says billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska has global business ambitions — but a dispute with another Russian tycoon, Michael Cherney, may get in his way

Oleg Deripaska wants it all. He already has quite a lot: assets in Russian insurance, pulp, construction, airports, media, cars, and oil, and a controlling stake in the world’s largest aluminium company, Rusal. These make him Russia’s second-richest man, worth $18 billion according to Forbes; only Roman Abramovich is richer.

But Deripaska’s ambition is not yet sated. He wants a place in the top league of global businessmen alongside Bill Gates and Lakshmi Mittal. And so far his ambition appears to enjoy strong Kremlin backing. This is remarkable considering the extent to which he is a Yeltsin-era figure, and how badly others of that ilk, such as Boris Berezovsky or Mikhail Khodorkovsky, have fared under President Putin. But, like Abramovich, Deripaska has managed to make the transition from the era of the oligarchs to the era of the security services.

More than any other Russian businessman, Deripaska is now profiting from Putin’s ambitious ‘public-private partnership’ programme to rebuild Russia. The Kremlin is preparing to put tens of billions of dollars into infrastructure projects around Russia, and Deripaska’s company, Basic Element, has already attracted state backing for a new hydroelectric dam and aluminium smelter in central Siberia. It also recently bought 30 per cent of a German construction company, Strabag, for $1.6 billion, which puts it in a strong position to win huge PPP road-building contracts. So tight is Basic Element’s embrace with the Kremlin, it is practically a ministry of the Russian government.

The big gun in Deripaska’s industrial arsenal is Rusal, which was formed last year by the merger of Deripaska’s Russian Aluminium with SUAL, the aluminium business of another oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, and the Russian metals assets of Glencore, Marc Rich’s former company.