Mikhail Fridman

Net Worth: $ 5.2 billion

Primary Source: Alfa-Group , oil, telecommunications
Age: 40
Marital Status: married, two daughters

After growing up in the Ukrainian city of Lvov, Fridman came to Moscow to study at the Institute of Steel and Alloys in the 1980s. He founded Alfa Group in 1988 with a group of college friends. Now it's a diverse conglomerate with oil, retail, telecom and Russia's largest private bank. He has strong Kremlin connections, including a former subordinate who serves as President Vladimir Putin's chief political advisor. Last year he merged his oil company, TNK, with the Russian oil interests of BP, in an $18 billion deal--quite an achievement, considering that five years ago BP was in a bitter fight against what it claimed were Fridman's unorthodox methods in taking over a partly BP-owned oil field. But that's Fridman's style: aggressive, highly leveraged takeovers, followed by reorganization and then a sale to a strategic investor.