Lost your job? Struggling with the bills? Spare a thought for Oleg Deripaska, whose paper wealth is estimated to have fallen by $25.1 billion (£17 billion) in the past year. He now has to get by with personal assets of only about $3.5 billion and the Russian edition of Forbes magazine yesterday demoted the oligarch from first to tenth place in a list of the country's richest people. Mr Deripaska, who owns Rusal, the largest producer of aluminium in the world, borrowed heavily to expand his empire during the boom years but he over-reached himself and when commodity prices collapsed and credit evaporated, so did his wealth. Until recently, he was undoubtedly first among Russia's oligarchs. He was close to Vladimir Putin and his father-in-law was Boris Yeltsin's former chief of staff. However, Mr Deripaska's ambitions did not stop with aluminium and he was pushing to turn Rusal into a diversified metals giant to rival BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. Mikhael Prokhorov, another oligarch, sold his 25 per cent stake in Norilsk Nickel, one of Russia's most strategically important resources companies, to Rusal for about $4.5 billion in cash and shares. But when the global economy began to slow, the price of metals collapsed and Norilsk's total market value plunged. To prevent the western banks seizing his Norilsk shares, Mr Deripaska was forced to seek a Kremlin bailout. The irony of his downfall is that Forbes has now rated Mr Prokhorov, 43, whose Norilsk stake has been the cause of so much trouble for Rusal, as Russia's richest man. Forbes estimated that Mr Prokhorov's wealth had fallen by $13.1 billion in the past 12 months, but he was still the richest Russian with assets worth $9.5 billion. Forbes said that the net worth of Russia's richest had fallen by 70 per cent over the year and the number of billionaires had fallen from 110 to 32. Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club, is estimated to have lost $15.8 billion, but still scores highly and is placed second on the rich list with $8.5 billion. ，英语毕业论文，英语论文 |
