Mikhail Prokhorov

Mikhail Dmitrievich Prokhorov (Михаил Дмитриевич Прохоров; born 3 May 1965) is a Russian oligarch, politician, and former owner of the Brooklyn Nets.

In April 2022, Prokhorov reportedly obtained Israeli citizenship.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Prokhorov obtained Russian state-owned metals assets at prices far below market value in Russia's controversial loans-for-shares privatization program.

His company, Norilsk Nickel, became the world's largest producer of nickel and palladium.

He is the former chairman of Polyus Gold, Russia's largest gold producer, and the former President of Onexim Group.

As of December 1, 2021, Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his wealth at US$14.0 billion and has named him the 148th richest person in the world, while Forbes Magazine lists his wealth at US$11.5 billion and the 193rd richest person in the world.

In 1989, he graduated from the Moscow Finance Institute.

From 1989 to 1992, he worked in a management position at the International Bank for Economic Cooperation.

In the 1990s, the Russian government needed loans to operate.

Prokhorov partnered with Potanin.

Their Onexim bank ran auctions for the government, in which bidders won the right to loan the Russian government money.

Onexim and its affiliates were the winning bidders at the Norilsk Nickel and other auctions they conducted.

The Russian government secured the loans with blocks of shares of the newly privatized state enterprises.

The government never repaid the loans, and, as a result, Onexim received ownership of the collateral, which was the shares in the privatized enterprises.

In 1992, at the age of 27, Prokhorov partnered with Potanin to run Interros, a holding company that they used in 1995 to effect the purchase of Norilsk Nickel, one of Russia's largest nickel and palladium mining and smelting companies.

During the largely un-regulated privatization of former state-controlled industries after the collapse of the USSR, Prokhorov and Potanin (the latter by then a deputy prime minister who oversaw privatization) were able acquire the shares from the workers of Norilsk Nickel for a fraction of their estimated market value and seize ownership of the company.

Prokhorov held the post of chairman of the board from 1992 until 1993.

Thereafter, he shortly served as head of management board of the MFK bank (International Finance Company) («Международная финансовая компания» (МФК)) and then in 1993 the newly formed United Export-Import Bank ("ОНЭКСИМ-банк") (Uneximbank; akas: Onexim Bank; Oneksimbank), with Alexander Khloponin, a friend from college, and Vladimir Potanin, to whom he was introduced by Khloponin and who became his business partner.

Oneksimbank is the financial twin of MFK and was also known as the ONEKSIMbank-MFK banking group which was also close to Andrey Vavilov.

In 1993, Prokhorov became the chairman of the board for Potanin's Onexim Bank, which, in 1993, became the paying agent for Finance Ministry bonds and a servicing bank for the City of Moscow's external economic activities.

In May 1994, Onexim Bank focused on large clients in foreign economic activity especially in the sectors of oil and gas, chemical and metallurgical industries.

In 1994, Onexim became the depository and paying agent for Russian Treasury obligations, and in 1995, it became the authorized bank for the federal agency dealing with bankrupt enterprises.

"Banks holding government funds earned handsome fees and paid minimal interest at a time when inflation was in the triple digits."

When he departed in 2007, Prokhorov's share of the company was worth US$7.5 billion.

Prokhorov's first major financial success came at MFK, which became a depository institution for the government.

The bank acquired Soviet assets in the amount of US$300 to US$400 million.

In 2011, Prokhorov ran as an independent candidate in the 2012 Russian presidential election.

He was third in voting, amassing 7.94 percent of the total vote.

In June 2012, he declared the establishment of the new Russian political party called Civic Platform.

Prokhorov was born in Moscow to Tamara and Dmitri Prokhorov.

On his paternal side his grandparents were Russians, relatively wealthy peasant farmers (known as kulaks) who were persecuted as class enemies under the Bolsheviks and again under Stalin.

His father, one of eight children, grew up poor, after his family "lost everything and was forced to flee from one part of Siberia and restart life in another".

He has one sibling, an elder sister, Irina.

On his maternal side his grandfather was Russian, and his grandmother Anna Belkina, was a Jewish microbiologist who remained in Moscow during World War II to make vaccines while her daughter Tamara was moved east to safety.

Dmitri Prokhorov was trained as a lawyer and handled international relations for the Soviet Committee of Physical Culture and Sport.

Tamara Prokhorova was a materials engineer at the Institute for Chemical Machine-Building.

As part of his job, Dmitri Prokhorov had the opportunity to travel abroad.

His wife worked as an engineer for a research group at the institute specializing in plastics.

They died within a year of each other, both from heart disease when they were in their late 50s.

Mikhail Prokhorov's sister, Irina, who "runs his philanthropic organizations, an erudite literary magazine, and a publishing house ... lives in a wing of his mansion west of Moscow".