Mikhail Prokhorov, in full Mikhail Dmitrievich Prokhorov, (born May 3, 1965, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), Russian businessman who made his fortune within the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse by shopping for shares in previously state-run companies. He ran for the Russian presidency in 2012.
Prokhorov’s father labored for the Soviet sports activities committee, and his mom was a chemical engineer. An apt pupil, Prokhorov gained entrance to the Moscow Finance Institute (now the Russian Financial University) in 1982. A yr later, nevertheless, he embarked upon a voluntary two-year stint within the Soviet military. He had beforehand been concerned in Komsomol, the Soviet youth league, and finally joined the Communist Party.
Following the completion of his military service in 1985, Prokhorov did handbook labour for a yr earlier than returning to the finance institute. While nonetheless a pupil, he began a enterprise treating blue denims to look fashionably distressed after which reselling them. The enterprise was successful and in the end employed a number of hundred staff. Prokhorov graduated in 1989 and accepted a place as a clerk on the International Bank for Economic Cooperation (IBEC). There he met Vladimir Potanin, who had labored for the overseas commerce ministry and was desperate to capitalize on the fast privatization occurring because the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Prokhorov was briefly chairman of an early business financial institution that he and Potanin established utilizing deposits moved by their house owners from the more and more bancrupt IBEC. In 1993 the companions shaped United Export Import Bank (UNEXIM), with Prokhorov as chairman and Potanin as president. In 1995 Potanin used his ministerial connections to create an association whereby Russian banks would make loans to the struggling Russian authorities, which might put up its mining, oil, and telecommunications holdings as collateral. UNEXIM was located as one of many auctioneers of the loans. Prokhorov and Potanin then marshalled UNEXIM’s sources and bid (by way of a subsidiary and at solely barely above the reserve value) on a mortgage hooked up to a controlling stake in Norilsk Nickel, the most important nickel and palladium producer on the earth, amongst different corporations. UNEXIM was additionally the auctioneer of the Norilsk mortgage and rejected one other, larger bid in favour of its personal. The “loans for shares” program enabled Prokhorov, Potanin, and a choose few others to grab management of the Russian economic system; that cohort got here to be often known as the “oligarchs.”
UNEXIM obtained full management of Norilsk in 1997 when the federal government defaulted on the mortgage. However, the financial institution failed in 1998 when the Russian authorities defaulted on its sovereign debt solely. UNEXIM’s belongings had been moved to a different financial institution shaped for the aim of holding them; that financial institution finally merged with UNEXIM in 2000. In 2001 Prokhorov assumed the directorship of Norilsk, the place he slashed the workforce and introduced in incentive packages to enhance circumstances on the Soviet-era Siberian refinery. Under his management the corporate started to point out a revenue, a few of which Prokhorov diverted right into a gold-mining enterprise, Polyus, in 2006.
He stepped down from Norilsk in 2007, following his resolution to accumulate a Russian energy firm. Many observers believed {that a} rising rift between Prokhorov and Potanin had been exacerbated by an embarrassing scandal at a French ski resort by which Prokhorov had been accused of offering prostitutes to his company. (He denied the allegations and was by no means charged.) The companions started dividing their shared belongings, largely held beneath the holding firm Interros, in April 2007. Prokhorov shaped ONEXIM Group, an funding fund with pursuits in nanotechnology and hydrogen gas cells, in May. He accomplished the sale of his shares in Norilsk in 2008. His timing proved fortuitous; the liquidation occurred simply previous to the worldwide monetary meltdown that started within the latter a part of that yr.
In 2010 Prokhorov bought a majority stake within the American skilled basketball crew the New Jersey Nets (which relocated to Brooklyn, New York, in 2012). He turned to politics in 2011, assuming the management of the liberal Right Cause occasion in Russia and saying his intention to run for parliament. He was thwarted, nevertheless, by internecine battle that resulted in his ouster from the occasion. In 2012 he ran for president towards prime minister and former president Vladimir Putin. Though he positioned behind a victorious Putin (who, in keeping with Russian election officers, garnered greater than 60 % of the vote) and Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov (about 17 %), he edged out far-right Liberal Democratic Party chief Vladimir Zhirinovsky and social democratic A Just Russia chief Sergey Mironov for a third-place end (almost 8 %). Prokhorov tried to hyperlink himself to teams that questioned the legitimacy of Putin’s win, however an look at a protest rally in Moscow’s Pushkin Square the day after the election was met with little enthusiasm.