Russian billionaires lost $28 billion due to tensions over Ukraine
There are 104 Russians in the Forbes global ranking of billionaires, 76 of them have lost their wealth since the end of December. The main owners of Novatek and Sibur, Leonid Mikhelson and Gennady Timchenko, lost more than others.
In relative terms, Denis Sverdlov, the founder of Arrival, faced the largest losses - his assessment of his condition decreased by almost 50% in a month
January turned out to be one of the worst months for the Russian stock market over the past two years. The massive sell-off began on January 13, when the Moscow Exchange index fell more than 2% after the Russian Foreign Ministry announced problems in negotiations with NATO on security guarantees. On January 18, the fall was 6.5%. The last time the Moscow exchange index fell by more than 5% at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020.
The past weekend did not bring relief to investors - on Monday, January 24, in the wake of unrelenting geopolitical risks and reports of a possible invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine, the Moscow Exchange index fell by 5.9%, dropping below 3300 points and thus returning to the levels of a year ago. The dollar rose above 79 rubles, the euro - 89 rubles.
The fall in stock indices affected the fortunes of Russia’s richest businessmen. The combined wealth of 104 Russian billionaires has fallen by $27.9 billion, according to the Forbes Real-Time counter, which evaluates the change in the fortunes of the world’s richest people in real time. December 20, 2021 was chosen as the starting point — on this date, we fixed exchange rates and stock quotes to determine how the fortunes of Russian billionaires have changed in 2021.
The fortune of Denis Sverdlov has decreased more than others in relative terms of Arrival — the quotes of the manufacturer of electric vehicles have collapsed by 46% since December 20, 2021. The decline in Sverdlov’s fortunes is not related to geopolitical tensions — the shares of his Arrival company have actually been falling since the IPO in March 2021 due to a slowdown in sales growth and an underestimation of capital requirements.
In second place on this list is the founder of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, whose fortune decreased by 26% (minus $600 million to $1.7 billion). Oleg Tinkov closes the top three, having lost 21% of his fortune.
