Viktor Vekselberg

Viktor Vekselberg was born in 1957 to a Ukrainian Jewish father and a Russian mother[9][10] in Drohobych, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (although some reports state that he was born in Lviv).[11] All of Vekselberg’s family of seventeen fell victims to the Holocaust.[12] They were murdered and buried in a mass grave during the Nazi repressions in Drohobych, Western Ukraine. Only Vekselberg’s father and his cousin survived the massacre. Vekselberg’s father had gone off to war, while his neighbors hid his cousin in a pit-house for almost four years. At the end of the war, she managed to flee to the territory that was controlled by the U.S. troops and later she moved to the U.S.[13] Andrew Intrater is Vekselbergs cousin.[14]

In 1979, he graduated from the Moscow State University of Railway Engineering.[15][16] After that, he worked as a researcher and headed the laboratory of the Design Bureau for rodless pumps "Konnas".[15]

Giving a presentation at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev witnessed the signing of a memorandum on cooperation between Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger and Viktor Vekselberg, June 23, 2010

In 1988, after the Gorbachev administration relaxed restrictions on private business as part of its new policy Perestroika and Glasnost, Vekselberg founded company Komvek, and in 1990, he co-founded Renova Group with college classmates, Leonard Blavatnik and Vladimir Balaeskoul (later, they both sold their stakes in Renova to Vekselberg). In the mid-1990s, Vekselberg and Blavatnik embarked on accumulating interests in aluminium smelters. The two partners recommissioned production at Irkutsk Aluminium Plant which had been previously suspended, and ran international sales from New York, USA.[17] In 1996, they co-founded Siberian-Urals Aluminium Company (SUAL) by merging of Ural and Irkutsk Aluminium Plants into Russia’s first aluminium holding company.[18][19] (SUAL would later merge with Russian Aluminium of Oleg Deripaska and alumina assets of Glencore to create United Company RUSAL, the world’s largest aluminium company).[20][21]  In 2002, SUAL constructed the first private railway in Russia to connect a bauxite mine in the Komi Republic with Ural Aluminium Plant through Trans-Siberian Railroad.[22]

SUAL was the first major Russian company to pursue a consistent social policy in regions, offering support to local communities and small entrepreneurs. [23][24] As from 2001, SUAL initiated several social and economic partnerships between its aluminium smelters and local municipalities in the regions of their presence.[25] Moreover, SUAL set up a lifetime pension plan for World War II veterans who used to work at the plants that became part of SUAL.[26]

In 1997, Alfa Group (owned by Mikhail Fridman, German Khan, and Alexei Kuzmichev) proposed to Vekselberg and Blavatnik a partnership for the acquisition of an interest in Tyumen Oil Company (TNK) that later became one of Russia's largest oil and gas companies.[27][28][29][30] In order to jointly hold oil assets, Alfa Group, Access Industries (a company owned by Blavatnik) and Vekselberg’s Renova established AAR consortium.[31]

In 2003, AAR and British Petroleum (a British-American company then) merged their Russian oil assets in a 50-50 joint venture named TNK-BP, and that was the largest private transaction in Russian history.[32] Acting as the chairman of the executive board of TNK, Vekselberg was instrumental in negotiating and closing the transaction. Vekselberg’s indirect participation in TNK-BP amounted to 12.5%.[33]

In the 2000’s, TNK-BP was the third oil & gas company in Russia. Among other things, TNK-BP considered construction of a gas pipeline from the Kovykta gas condensate field through Mongolia to China and South Korea.[34][35][36] Also, the original plan also envisaged the possibility to build up a large helium production facility on the basis of Sayanskkhimplast plant to export helium to Asia-Pacific markets.[37] In the middle of 2012, BP started talks with the state oil company with a view to selling BP’s 50% stake in TNK-BP.[38] Rosneft finalized preliminary agreement with respect to the complex deal in early 2013 by proposing to buy out TNK-BP in whole for a cash consideration to come from AAR and a mix of cash and shares from BP.[39]

In 2006, Renova Group decided to diversify its business and divest form oil and gas sector to expand its footprint in manufacturing, hi-tech, and renewable energy.[40] In 2007, Standard & Poor's assigned a 'BB' long-term corporate credit rating to Renova Holding Ltd. and that spoke for the Group’s significant progress in portfolio diversification and liquidity improvement.[41][42][43] After divesting from the oil & gas sector, Vekselberg focused on the renewable energy, transport infrastructure, manufacturing, and IoT. Vekselberg became a pioneer in the Russian solar power sector.[44] Founded by Renova in 2009, Hevel was the first company in Russia to build a full-cycle plant for the production of solar modules in 2015 and the first industrial-scale solar power plant in 2017.[45][46] In 2017, Vekselberg inaugurated Platov International Airport in Rostov-on-Don, the first greenfield airport built in Russia after the collapse of the USSR.[47][48] In 2019, Gagarin International Airport, the second greenfield airport, was put in operation in Saratov.[49]

In 2004, Renova Group opened a branch in Zurich, Renova Management AG, as a part of the strategic plan to diversify its business towards hi-tech.

In July 2006, Renova Group acquired 10.25% in Unaxis Holding AG (later renamed as OC Oerlikon) from Victory Industriebeteiligung AG, an Austrian conglomerate.[50][51]

In April 2007, Everest Beteiligungs GmbH, a joint venture of Renova Group and Victory, acquired approximately 18% in shares and additional 14% in physical delivery options in Sulzer.[50][51]

Later, in 2007 – 2008, Victory sold out their stakes in both companies.[52][53][54] In 2009, Renova Group raised its stake in Oerlikon to 44.7%.

This accumulation of stakes in the two flagships of the Swiss economy by the foreign conglomerate raised concerns with the Swiss authorities. Nevertheless, in 2010 the Federal Criminal Court confirmed that neither Vekselberg, nor Victory done any wrongdoing while building stakes in Oerlikon.[55] Later, the Federal Department of Finance dropped the criminal proceedings initiated against the three investors in Sulzer in 2009.[56][57]

In 2008, Vekselberg proxied a deal between Russian and Hungarian governments, buying the former embassy building from Hungary for $21m and immediately selling it to the Russian government for $116m, while the market price of the building was estimated at $50m. Investigation of the paper trail by Alexey Navalny and the Rospil project has found several invalid and backdated documents,[58] thus suggesting a collusion (e.g. the tender held by the Hungarian side was totally fictive, as the building was already sold by that time). Hungarian officials responsible for the deal (Tátrai Miklós, Marta Horvathne Fekszi and Arpad Szekely) were detained in February 2011.[59] On the Russian side, a criminal investigation was only started in August 2013.[60]

In 2010, Vekselberg was appointed President of the Skolkovo Foundation, a non-profit organization funded by a mix of private investors and the Russian government, with the goal of building a technology research hub in Russia.[61] As its president, Vekselberg signed a deal for Cisco Systems to invest $1 billion over ten years into Skolkovo Foundation projects.[61] The Federal Bureau of Investigation subsequently issued a statement claiming that the Skolkovo Foundation was being used by the Russian government to gain access to classified American technology.[61]

In May 2010 Vekselberg reported that he would be relocating from Zurich to the Zug canton, a region of Switzerland that still supports the lump sum tax policy which was abolished by Zurich.[62]

In March 2017, he was offered citizenship of the Republic of Cyprus due to his investments in the country; however, a spokesperson for Vekselberg reiterated that he only had Russian citizenship.[63]

In February 2004, Vekselberg purchased nine Fabergé Imperial Easter eggs from the Forbes publishing family in New York City.[83] The collection was transported to Russia and exhibited in the Kremlin and in Dubrovnik in 2007. Vekselberg is the single largest owner of Fabergé eggs in the world, owning fifteen of them (nine Imperial, two Kelch, and four other Fabergé eggs). In a 2013 BBC Four documentary, Vekselberg revealed that he had spent just over $100 million purchasing the nine Fabergé Imperial eggs from the Forbes collection.[84] He claims never to have displayed them in his home, saying he bought them because they are important to Russian history and culture, and he believed them to be the best jewelry art in the world. In the same BBC documentary, Vekselberg revealed plans to open a museum to display the eggs in his collection.[84] The result was the Fabergé Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, which had its official opening ceremony on November 19, 2013.[85]

In September 2006, Vekselberg agreed to pay approximately $1 million in expenses to transport the Lowell House Bells from Harvard University in the United States back to their original location in the Danilov Monastery and to purchase replacement bells. The historic bells returned to Moscow on September 12, 2008, with the assistance of the U.S. director of the organization, Edward Mermelstein.

Vekselberg paid £1.7 million at a Christie's auction in 2005 for Odalisque, a nude said to be the work of Russian artist Boris Kustodiev.[86] However, soon after the purchase, experts working for Vekselberg's art fund, Aurora, began to cast doubt on the picture's authenticity. They claimed that Kustodiev's signature, dated 1919, was done in aluminium-based pigment not available until after the artist's death in 1927. Vekselberg sued Christie's, and the judge ruled in July 2012 that he was entitled to recover the £1.7 million that he paid for the painting, plus Christie's was ordered to pay around £1 million in costs.[87]

Vekselberg's firm Renova donated between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.[88]

He donated $4.5 million to the construction of the $50 million Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, and is the chairman of the museum's board of trustees.[89][90] He finances the restoration and construction of synagogues in Russia, including the construction of the Choral Synagogue in Saratov.[91]

In 2019, a monument was opened in Moscow to commemorate resistance heroes in concentration camps and ghettos. Vekselberg donated $300,000 to its creation.[92]

In 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began, Viktor Vekselberg donated 180 million rubles to buy medical equipment, personal protective equipment, and food for socially vulnerable groups of citizens.[93]

In 2021, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov awarded Viktor Vekselberg, among other leaders of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, for helping to bring back Russian tourists from abroad.[94]

He is married to Marina and has two children, a daughter and a son.[95] His father is Jewish, and his mother Christian. He identifies himself as multi-national and does not attend weekly synagogue or church services.[96]

Vekselberg is a longtime friend and business partner of British–American billionaire and major Republican Party donor Len Blavatnik,[97] who is close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[98]

Being placed under sanctions by President Trump's administration he names to be his personal tragedy, because he was left unable to visit his daughter and grandson in New York.[99]

Vekselberg reportedly lives in Switzerland.[100]

• Media related to Victor Vekselberg at Wikimedia Commons
• Forbes:Viktor Vekselberg
• RENOVA
• Made in Russia:Viktor Vekselberg