Ukrainian billionaires have lost nearly half of their wealth since the conflict

This is equivalent to a 45% decrease in property value compared to before February 28. Forbes One of the reasons the wealth of Ukraine’s billionaires has not continued to decline despite the conflict is not over is that they are largely located abroad.

Currently, Ukraine has 7 billionaires, with a total fortune of 11.9 billion USD. Because with the list published at the end of March 2021, their assets have decreased by more than 7 billion USD. One of the country’s most famous tycoons, Petro Poroshenko, who served as president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, is not even on this year’s billionaires list.

His net worth more than halved, estimated at $700 million, as confectionery company Roshen lost about 75% of its market capitalization and was forced to close two factories in Kyiv and Boryspil due to hostilities.

Most Ukrainian billionaires own large assets in industries from steel and coal to mining and banking. The conflict has greatly affected their assets as well as many of their businesses.

When the Russian army entered, a number of billionaires flew home to support the government. Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine, told Forbes In a March 10 interview, his industrial holding company, System Capital Management, was “helping the military and the force to defend the territory”.

Below is the wealth movement of 7 Ukrainian billionaires, according to the list of Forbes.

Rinat Akhmetov

Net worth: 4.2 billion USD
Source of wealth: steel, coal
Change since conflict: – $4.3 billion

Akhmetov – the son of a coal miner – is Ukraine’s richest billionaire and also whose fortune was hit hardest by the war. He owns shares in several industrial companies through SCM. His largest stake is in the steel company Metinvest Group.

Metinvest’s factory in the city of Mariupol was besieged, while the factory in the town of Avdiivka suffered damage due to the clash. On March 31, Akhmetov announced that the SCM would file a lawsuit against Russia for damages related to its military operation.

Akhmetov’s next major stake is in the energy company DTEK, which provides about 30% of Ukraine’s electricity. DTEK was hit two days before the war when one of its coal-fired power plants east of Luhansk was damaged.

DTEK said in a statement on March 29 that it had helped 900 people evacuate from Mariupol and the city of Berdyansk. In addition to humanitarian help, Akhmetov’s enterprises also support the production of more than 35,000 anti-tank barricades.

Victor Pinchuk

Net worth: $1.9 billion
Asset source: steel pipe, multi-industry
Change since conflict: – 700 million USD

Pinchuk withdrew part of his assets from Interpipe, the steel company he founded in 1990. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the company lost all of its business in Russia. Interpipe also stopped production and exports at the end of February, just as the conflict broke out.

Pinchuk also owns nearly a billion dollars worth of real estate outside Ukraine and an estimated $600 million in cash and art. He is one of Ukraine’s most pro-Western billionaires. He is the host of the annual “Ukraine morning” event at the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland), and the “Ukraine lunch” at the Munich Security Conference on February 19.

Vadim Novinsky

Net worth: $1.3 billion
Source of wealth: steel
Change since conflict: -2.2 billion USD

Novinsky holds a small stake in billionaire Akhmetov’s steel company Metinvest. This Russian-born billionaire obtained Ukrainian citizenship in 2012 and later won an election to parliament.

He has long been considered one of Ukraine’s most Putin-friendly billionaires. He tried to expedite negotiations with Russia before the conflict broke out. He left Ukraine when tensions escalated, but returned home days before the Russian military campaign.

Kostyantin Zhevago

Net worth: $1.3 billion
Source of wealth: mining
Change since conflict: -800 million USD

Zhevago owns a majority stake in the mining company Ferrexpo. He took over Ferrexpo’s predecessor, Poltava Iron Ore, and helped him list on the London Stock Exchange in 2007. On February 25, the company announced that it could not complete the contract due to force majeure reasons. with some iron ore customers.

However, the company confirmed that mining and ore processing will continue. Ferrexpo established a humanitarian fund worth $7.5 million on March 7 to provide housing, free meals, childcare support and medical supplies, among other services.

Henadiy Boholyubov

Net worth: $1.1 billion
Source of wealth: banks, investments
Change since conflict: -900 million USD

Boholyubov co-founded PrivatBank with billionaire Ihor Kolomoyskyy. It is the largest commercial bank in Ukraine, with a capital in the early 1990s of one million dollars. The Ukrainian government nationalized PrivatBank in 2016 to prevent its collapse after investigations revealed large-scale fraud.

In December 2017, the UK froze more than $2.5 billion in assets of Kolomoyskyy and Boholyubov at PrivatBank in a lawsuit. Most of Boholyubov’s wealth now comes from Privat Group, a conglomerate that operates gas and oil stations, and other investments.

Vlad Yatsenko

Net worth: $1.1 billion
Source of wealth: Fintech
Change since conflict: none

Yatsenko is the co-founder of London-based digital bank Revolut. The startup has become the most valuable fintech in the UK when it raised $800 million at a valuation of $33 billion in July 2021. This deal helped him step into the ranks of billionaires.

The Anglo-Ukrainian citizen runs the business with co-founder Nik Storonsky. Revolut has donated $2 million to the Ukrainian Red Cross since the conflict broke out.

Ihor Kolomoyskyy

Net worth: 1 billion USD
Source of wealth: banks, investments
Change since conflict: -800 million USD

Besides his fossil fuel investments, Kolomoyskyy also owns stakes in steel, iron and chemical companies, as well as electricity distribution, seaports and Bitcoin mining businesses.

This billionaire used to be one of the pro-European tycoons, said to have spent millions of dollars sponsoring and equipping volunteers to stop the Russian army in 2014. He was also the governor of Dnipro – his hometown. my incense – from March 2014 to March 2015.

However, he is very tight-lipped about this crisis. One of his Hawker 800XP machines was reported to have flown to Kiev from London on February 21. His two yachts registered in the Cayman Islands were last seen in Tivat (Montenegro) and Trogir (Croatia) on April 4.

Session An (according to Forbes)