Russian billionaire of Jewish origin, the largest percentage of his fortune comes mainly from oil , many say that his wealth has not been achieved thanks to his ability in business, but that the key is found in the privileged relationships he always maintained with circles. of power of Moscow . He is best known for owning a team of football in England , the Chelsea Football Club .
Bibliographic synthesis
Childhood and adolescence
Roman Abramovich Arkadyevitch was born 24 from October of 1966 in Saratov , USSR , a small town located on the banks of the Volga. From a very young age he had to face a difficult and hard life, since when he was only one and a half years old he lost his mother, and when he was only 4 years old his father died. His father had been a construction worker and his mother was a musician, which shows that Roman lived his childhood in the bosom of a humble family of Jewish origin.
Due to the family tragedy, the little boy was raised by his grandmother Tatiana, who lived in the city of Ukhta, in the Russian Komi region, in the extreme north of Russia , where Roman spent his childhood and part of his adolescence, until At 18 he decided to move to Moscow to carry out his studies. When the Soviet monolith began to totter in the mid-1980s, Abramovich went to study at the Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas in Moscow.. No one knows what he studied, but two things seem true: he made full use of his contacts in his hometown and quickly realized what had to be done to become extremely rich extremely fast by exploiting the hybrid laws of the Gorbachev to Yeltsin transition .
Business life
The largest percentage of his fortune was built in the early nineties, a historic moment in the Russian country, as it coincided with the privatization of important sectors of the country’s economy, a measure promoted by then-President Borís Yeltsin . It was precisely at that time that Roman Abramovich decided to start a partnership with Borís Berezovski , in order to found the Sibneft oil company.
Business in sports
The world met Roman Abramovich in 2003 , when he became the owner of the English football club Chelsea FC ; There he assumed the debt of 80 million pounds and bought first-rate footballers. It also has interests in the team CSKA of Moscow and sponsors a soccer academy for children.
Abramovich bought Chelsea in June of 2003 to do so champion Europe . He fired the then coach after a year because he had fallen in love with the man of the moment, the Portuguese José Mourinho . Together they formed a triumphant pair that gave Chelsea two consecutive English leagues, something never seen in a popular team, but which until then had won only one league in 100 years. But Mourinho has a personality that is too strong for Abramovich’s liking and Abramovich fired him as soon as he could: as soon as the Portuguese started his fourth season at the helm.
All these decisions seem to hide an iron fist in a silk glove. His own people describe him as a man at the same time shy, ruthless, generous, fearless, calculating and visionary. “He is a man who does not admit what he does not want to admit. That when he makes a decision, there is no one to stop him. If he loves you, he gets you ”, his first wife, Olga, has repeated several times.
Foray into politics
With the fall of the Soviet Union , Abramovich quickly became rich. He placed himself in the political shadow of Boris Yeltsin first and Vladimir Putin later. He made friends and business with Boris Berezovski and in 1995 they struck a great blow together by taking advantage of the privatizations of the old regime to gain control of the Sibneft oil company for 100 million dollars on credit. Soon its value was multiplied to several billions. It was probably already worth them when they bought it.
Then came control of Aeroflot and then several Trans World Group aluminum plants. Unlike Berezovski and other oligarchs, Abramovich tried not to show any political ambition so as not to create enemies in the regime. Even when Putin promoted him as governor of Chukotka , he made an effort to clarify that this was not the first step in a political career. “It is a new endeavor for me. I have never managed a territory. I have never spoken in public. I have to try it to know if I like it or not ”, he declared then.
Gone were the difficulties of the grandson of a Jewish family deported from Lithuania to Siberia by the Soviets, who lost his mother when he was one year old and his father before three, who was raised by the family of his paternal uncle, a high official of the Soviet oil industry, in the small town of the Komi Republic, in northwestern Russia , and by his grandmother in Moscow .
Properties
Roman Abramovich was the first buyer of an airbus A380 for private use. He did it last year, after several negotiations. It is estimated that the Russian millionaire paid for the aircraft US $ 300 million. The conditions: color and certain details to your liking. The airbus A380 is the largest aircraft in the world. A colossus capable of carrying 840 passengers and measuring 73 meters.
Through London- based investment company Millhouse Capital , Abramovich has become a true businessman. With it he has won tenders to exploit oil , gas and gold in the Chukotka region, of which he is governor. It also owns a 41% stake in Evraz Group, one of the ten largest steel companies in the world, and owns 25% of Aeroflot, the leading Russian airline.
He prefers to live in giant mansions. In 1999 he bought in West Sussex, England , the home of Australian billionaire Kerry Packer , a land of 1,700,000 square meters. Five years later he acquired a huge villa on the French Riviera, the same one where the Greek magnate Aristotle Onassis lived for some years. Since May 2008 he has owned a ranch near Aspen, Colorado. In total, it has invested 45 million pounds. According to this official list, Abramovich also has a total of 16 homes, of which nine are real luxurious mansions, and which are located in Russia , the United States , France , the Caribbean and London..
The millionaire’s car fleet also demonstrates the surprising heritage he possesses, made up of a total of seven vehicles, belonging to prestigious brands such as Mercedes Benz , BMW , Rover and Volkswagen . But Abramovich also has other types of means of transportation of his own, such as yachts, helicopters, private planes and others.
He owns a total of 22 bank accounts, among which the total sum of money amounts to approximately 13.4 billion dollars.