Alexey Mordashov

In the middle of January 2015 steel tycoon Alexey Mordashov met with Putin and promised that he would avoid investments that the Russian president would consider unwise. Mordashov reported that his giant steel and mining company, Severstal, got rid of all of its units in North America and is focusing on Russian assets.



In 2011 he had sold three money-losing steel plants in the U.S. to billionaire Ira Rennert's industrial conglomerate Renco Group for $1.2 billion, half of what he had paid for the factories three years earlier. Severstal kept two other plants, in Columbus, MS, and Dearborn, MI. Mordashov had relied on a $730 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to refurbish and expand the Dearborn operation, but the loan was revoked in 2012 in response to political pressure. Since 2004 he invested $3 billion in Columbus and Dearborn and then sold both plants in September 2014 for $2.3 billion. After that deal Severstal paid record dividends of $1 billion. At the end of 2013 Mordashov, together with Putin's friend Yuri Kovalchuk, bought 50% of the shares of Tele2 Russia, the fourth-largest cellular operator in Russia. Together with Kovalchuk he is a shareholder of Bank Rossiya which is closely associated with Putin (the Kremlin denies any links) and is under sanctions. In 2011 Mordashov increased his stake in Power Machines, a steam turbines maker, buying a 25% stake from Siemens. The son of parents who were both mill workers, he rose to become the finance director of a steel mill, and then when the plant's elderly director instructed him to acquire shares to keep them from an outsider, Mordashov bought most of them for himself.

Alexey Mordashov is a Russian oligarch and self-made billionaire with an estimated net worth of $13 billion as of December 2015, according to Bloomberg. He ranked 73rd in the list of World Billionaires and the 11th richest person in Russia. His business career began in 1988 when he joined Cherepovetskiy Metallurgical Plant as an economist. Shortly before the company was privatized, he served as the finance director in 1992. He founded his investment fund and bought up shares in the firm. Later on he has amassed the largest stake in the steel mill. He became the general director in 1996.
Mordashov also buil the Severstal, a mining conglomerate that acquires steel, coal and mining companies. It has been a successful company until it began selling several of their U.S.-based plants for an almost 50% loss to a Russian conglomerate. In 2011, he has increased his stake in an equipment maker, Power Machine, and has bought a 25% stake from Siemens.
In 2012, Alexey Mordashov formed a new company that went public in the London Stock Exchange, after he was done with the spin-off of the Severstal’s gold mining assets. Previously, he sold three of the money-losing steel plant for $1.2 billion to fellow billionaire Ira Rennert’s Renco Group. He held on to two of his several plants in Columbus, Mississippi and Dearborn, Michigan.