Vladimir Potanin
Vladimir Potanin
Vladimir Olegovich Potaninis a Russian billionaire and entrepreneur. He acquired his wealth notably through the controversial loans-for-shares program in Russia. He is one of the wealthiest men in Russia, with an estimated net worth of $13.5 billion. His long-term business partner was Mikhail Prokhorov until they decided to split in 2008. Subsequently, they put their mutual assets in a holding company, Folletina Trading, until their asset division was agreed upon...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth3 January 1961
CountryRussian Federation
For a rich and reasonably successful guy, it is impossible not to enjoy your job; otherwise, why would you spend so much time and effort doing it? I am a great fan of Norilsk, and I like this kind of challenge.
I am not trying to say that I am poor and that I don't like beautiful things. But I don't like luxury for luxury sake or in the sense of showing off luxury.
Many people say the privatisation was unfair: that is true - it was unfair. That is a fact: some people became rich and others did not. Unfair does not mean illegal, but it was inevitably unfair.
For me, my father was, and still is, a symbol of qualified persons in the Ministry of Foreign Trade under Soviet conditions.
There are ways of fighting for your interests. I never do something in business that I wouldn't do in life.
When you supervise something, it is one thing. When you are in the middle of something, there is a different pace of life.
Everybody starts with creating or acquiring certain property in order to create the material to work with. When we started our business, we thought first of all about development, how to grow, and we managed to do this, even with all the difficulties and all the difficult rules that were implemented in Russia at that time.
Frankly speaking, I decided to become a businessman at the moment when I understood that it is possible, because I grew up in a country where it was not possible. There existed even a special article in the penal code of the Soviet Union which punished entrepreneurial activity.