Banking, privatization and Norilsk Nickel
Potanin's fortune is built on Norilsk Nickel, now known as Nornickel, the Arctic mining and metals company that is a leading producer of nickel and palladium and also produces platinum, copper and cobalt. He gained control of it in the turbulent years after the end of the Soviet Union.
In 1990 he set up Interros, a foreign trade company, and in 1993 he founded Oneximbank, which quickly became one of the larger private banks in Russia. In 1995 he was among the authors of the loans for shares scheme, under which private banks lent money to the cash strapped government in exchange for the right to manage, and eventually sell, stakes in major state companies. When the government did not repay, the banks auctioned the stakes, and in several cases the banks running the auctions won them. Oneximbank came away with a controlling stake in Norilsk Nickel and with a large holding in the oil company Sidanco.
The scheme was widely criticized as unfair, but it gave Potanin control of one of the most valuable mining assets in the world. Over the following years he consolidated that position, while other assets were sold or restructured. Nornickel's mines and smelters in the Norilsk region and on the Kola Peninsula remain the center of his wealth.
Interros and its holdings
Potanin owns Nornickel through Interros, the holding company he controls. For years he shared ownership with Mikhail Prokhorov, his former business partner, but the two divided their assets in 2007 and 2008. Potanin then entered a long dispute with Oleg Deripaska's Rusal, the other large shareholder in Nornickel, which was eased by a shareholder agreement in 2012, when Potanin became chief executive of Nornickel.
Interros has held or holds stakes in:
- Nornickel, the main asset
- Rosa Khutor, a ski resort near Sochi that hosted events at the 2014 Winter Olympics
- Rosbank, a bank bought from Societe Generale in 2022
- T-Bank, formerly Tinkoff, in which Interros bought a large stake in 2022
- Other investments in fertilizers, real estate and technology
Nornickel has also expanded its processing and battery materials businesses and has developed new mining projects in the Norilsk region. Potanin has remained its president and the person most closely identified with its strategy.
A Soviet trade background
Vladimir Olegovich Potanin was born in Moscow in 1961. His father was a senior official in the Soviet foreign trade system, and the family lived abroad for periods during his childhood. He studied international economics at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, which trained many diplomats and trade officials, and graduated in 1983.
He then worked at the Soviet foreign trade ministry, in an organization dealing with exports of nonferrous metals and fertilizers. That experience gave him contacts in industry and an understanding of the metals trade, both of which proved useful when he went into business on his own at the end of the 1980s.
In 1996 and 1997 Potanin served as first deputy prime minister in Boris Yeltsin's government, responsible for economic matters, before returning to business. He has remained a prominent figure in Russian business associations.
Philanthropy, culture and sanctions
Potanin set up the Vladimir Potanin Charitable Foundation in 1999. It funds scholarships for university students and teachers, support for museums and cultural projects, and programs to develop philanthropy in Russia. He has also made large gifts to the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, where he has long sat on the board of trustees.
He was for many years a trustee of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York, a position he gave up in 2022. In 2013 he signed the Giving Pledge, becoming one of the first Russians to do so and committing to give away most of his wealth.
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Potanin was sanctioned by the United Kingdom and later by the United States, Canada and other countries. The European Union did not list him for a long period, reflecting Nornickel's importance as a supplier of metals to European industry. He has continued to run Nornickel from Russia.