Alexander Abramov

Alexander Abramov () (born 1959) is a former scientist who became an industrial magnate as head of EvrazHolding, Russia's largest steel producer. Beginning in 1998, he has amassed the largest steel and iron empire in Russia, which employs 125,000 people, controls about 22 percent of the country's total steel output and has an annual turnover of $20 billion. Abramov was listed on the Forbes list of billionaires for 2011 with an estimated net worth of $7.5 billion.

Career

EvrazHolding is a product of Russia's growth since the 1998 financial crisis and Abramov is representative of the second wave of Russian magnates who went into business after the best assets had been taken. Unlike the first wave of politically connected oligarchs, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Potanin, Abramov had neither political leverage nor financial resources to help him benefit from Russia's chaotic privatisation of the 1990s. In recent years Evraz-Holding has emerged as one of the most aggressive vertically integrated business groups in Russia. Its assets include three large steel mills, three coalmines and several ore-enriching plants, as well as a large commercial port, Nakhodka, in the east of the country.

He graduated from the elite Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology – Russia's answer to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By the age of 31 he was a deputy head of the Institute of High...
Read More