Steel grip. How Alexey Mordashov took over Severstal . King of Steel Who is Alexey Mordashov by nationality?

How an introverted boy Alexey Mordashov made influential friends and became an oligarch

Pioneer means first. For Russian Forbes, the owner of Severstal, Alexey Mordashov, became a pioneer - it was his photo that appeared on the cover of the first issue of the magazine, which was published in April 2004. The article about the steel magnate was written by the magazine's editor-in-chief, Paul Klebnikov. At the same time, Mordashov took ninth place in Forbes’ “Golden Hundred” that year; he has never been ranked first since then, but has already been second three times.

This year, Forbes estimated Mordashov’s fortune at $17.5 billion. The businessman became first in the ranking among “metallurgists” and second in the general list. Recently, in a conversation with Forbes, one of the Russian billionaires called Mordashov a pioneer. After all, Mordashov is “always ready” - for any demands and wishes of the authorities.

Executive

Lesha Mordashov was a correct and responsible boy as a child. I didn’t shoot with a slingshot, I didn’t fight at school. My only favorite toy is a gray teddy bear; my hobby is collecting badges. He was often sick, but the teachers of the Cherepovets school where he studied always set Alexey as an example; his classmates, in retaliation, nicknamed the future billionaire Template.

Mordashov's parents worked at the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant; he did not become original with his choice of profession - he entered the Leningrad Engineering and Economic Institute, after graduating in 1988 he returned to Cherepovets and began working at the plant as a senior economist of the workshop.

The energetic and efficient young man was noticed and loved by the general director of the plant, Yuri Lipukhin. In 1992, he appointed 27-year-old Mordashov as director of finance and economics for the entire enterprise, and in 1993 he instructed him to deal with privatization. Over the course of three years, the company he created, Severstal-invest, used the proceeds from the sale of products to buy 43% of the plant’s shares. What to do with them? Having completed an internship in Austria, Mordashov understood this better than the “red director” Lipukhin, who, by the way, became his godfather in 1997. The godson first took the post of general director of the plant, moving Lipukhin to the position of chairman of the board of directors, and in the spring of 1999, secretly from him, bought another 17% of the enterprise. “I approached him and said: Alyosha, you can’t act like that,” Lipukhin told Forbes. “His answer was extremely short: this is not written anywhere.”

Enterprising

The 1998 crisis collapsed the Russian economy, but things quickly improved for metallurgists. The Cherepovets plant's revenue was in foreign currency, and its costs were in rubles. In 1997, the plant earned $6 million in net profit, in 2000 - $453 million. Big money completely quarreled the godson with the godfather. Lipukhin demanded that profits be invested in the development of production, and Mordashov decided to create a diversified holding company and began buying up assets: plywood mills, shares in ports, coal mines, as well as the Kolomna Diesel Locomotive Plant and the UAZ Plant. At the beginning of 2001, Mordashov asked Lipukhin to sell him his shares in Severstal. He agreed, but, as he admitted later, he sold it at a price six times less than he could have earned on the market.

The former general director of the Soviet metallurgical giant became involved in real estate in Sochi, then moved with his family to Canada and in April 2011 died of a heart attack at the age of 75. Mordashov admitted that the privatization of Severstal, although not entirely fair, was expedient, since the company eventually received an “honest owner.” Before he had time to complete the registration of a controlling stake in himself, he immediately received a blow from an unexpected direction. In August 2001, 32% of the plant's shares owned by Mordashov were arrested. The lawsuit was filed by Elena Mordashova, from whom he divorced in 1996.

Caring

Ex-wife Elena demanded that a quarter of the businessman’s income be transferred to their son Ilya and wanted to recover about 600 million rubles in alimony that had been underpaid for a year and a half. Mordashov, according to her, paid her son only 18,000 rubles a month.

The litigation between the owner of Severstal and his ex-wife lasted more than a year and ended with his complete victory in October 2002 - the court found Elena’s claims against her ex-husband unfounded. She did not appear in the information field anymore. Mordashov slowly acquired the attributes of a wealthy person; he did not advertise his wealth. He got his first foreign car, an Audi, only in 1998, his own house in 2000, and security in 2001.

Alexei Mordashov's second wife was also named Elena - she worked at the plant as an accountant, they got married in June 1997, and in 1999 the couple had a son, Kirill. “Alexey was with me during childbirth, holding my hand. The next morning he gave me pearl earrings and a necklace,” Mordashov’s second wife said in an interview with Profile magazine in 2001. - And a few days before 2001, I gave Alexey, as he himself says, the best New Year’s gift in his life - his son Nikita... Alexey simply adores babies. He is a very gentle dad."

Now Mordashov has a third wife, Marina. They have two daughters. The eldest, Masha, studies at the Wunderpark school near Moscow, which was opened by her mother, five-year-old Anastasia is being raised at home with three-year-old Daniil. A month of education in 1st grade at Wunderpark Primary School costs 132,500 rubles.

Global

A bad metallurgist is one who does not dream of world domination. In 2004, Mordashova's Severstal began expansion to the West - it acquired a steelmaking company in the USA, Rouge Steel Company. And on May 26, 2006, information appeared about the merger of Severstal with one of the world's largest steel companies - the French Arcelor. In a merged company with annual revenue of €46 billion, Mordashov was counting on a 38.5% stake (with an additional payment of €1.25 billion). “Never before has a Russian company... become part of a global company, a leader in its sector in the world, with Russian shareholders gaining dominance in this company,” he said in an interview with Vedomosti. “Never before have transaction amounts been so large.” President Vladimir Putin lobbied for the deal at the state level. “It would be a great exaggeration to say that I am a friend of Mr. Putin,” Mordashov said in an interview with the Financial Times, answering a question about the Russian government’s support for the deal with Arcelor.

The brilliant plan collapsed after Arcelor received a merger proposal from a comparable metals giant, Mittal Steel. Mordashov was left behind, but did not abandon his plans to conquer the world. In 2007–2008, he got rid of non-core assets - he sold the Severstal-Auto company (now called Sollers, which includes UAZ) and transport companies (they were merged into the N-Trans holding) to management and bought American metallurgical companies plants Sparrows Point, Warren and Wheeling, coal mining PBS Coals, iron ore companies with deposits in Brazil and Africa.

Tourist

The 2008 crisis brought down the auto industry and steel production. The blow was so strong that Mordashov quickly realized that he was still too weak for global games. From 2011 to 2014, he sold all American plants. And he did not hide his disappointment: “Of course, we made a big mistake, we sold much cheaper than we bought.” From 2004 to 2014, Severstal spent $5.9 billion on acquisitions and investments in American factories, and sold them for $2.2 billion. Mordashov got rid of Dearborn and Columbus in 2014 after the US imposed sanctions against Russia in connection with the annexation of Crimea .

At the beginning of 2015, the billionaire met with President Putin, reported on the sale of all American assets and promised him to henceforth avoid “unwise investments.” But Mordashov still invests abroad today - in the tourism business. In 2007, he began to carefully buy shares of the world's largest travel company TUI (headquartered in Germany) on the market. The company's capitalization is almost $8 billion, and Mordashov's share is 23% of the shares. His goal is to bring the package to the blocker (25%). German management welcomed Mordashov's entry into the ranks of shareholders, assessing the scale of the Russian tourism market. In addition, Mordashov earned a reputation in Germany as a reliable strategic investor due to joint projects with Siemens.

Friendly

Mordashov knows how to choose friends. He was friends with Anatoly Chubais, who taught at his institute. Chubais introduced him to the club of young reformers who later became members of the government of Boris Yeltsin. Friendship with St. Petersburg financier Vladimir Kogan brought him closer to Putin. In 2003, Mordashov became a co-owner of Rossiya Bank. After the imposition of sanctions against the bank, according to Forbes, he considered the possibility of leaving the shareholders, but did not dare.

In 2008, Mordashov, Surgutneftegaz and Rossiya Bank created the National Media Group, which now owns stakes in TV channels (Fifth, First, REN TV), newspapers (Izvestia, Metro -Petersburg", "Sport-Express") and the radio station "Life. Sound". In March 2016, Gazprom-Media bought 7.5% of NMG (the entire group was valued at $2.2 billion). In 2013, Mordashov and Yuri Kovalchuk F 93 acquired a 50% stake in the mobile operator Tele2.

Manager

Severstal, which is fully self-sufficient in raw materials and coal, has always paid generous dividends to shareholders, breaking this rule only once - in the crisis year of 2009. The owner of Severstal was not seen spending heavily on mansions and megayachts. “You can’t wear two suits. Dividends will still go into investments, where else?” - Mordashov reasoned.

Over time, his business expanded and acquired new directions that required attention. In May 2015, Mordashov decided to step away from the operational management of Severstal and left his post as CEO of the management company Severstal Management in order to “redistribute time and effort in favor of asset portfolio management.”

Over two years, by February 2017, the value of his stake in the gold miner NordGold increased 2.4 times, to $1.2 billion, the share in the Sveza timber industry group, according to Forbes, from $220 million to $520 million, in tour operator TUI - from $1.27 billion to $1.9 billion. Mordashov's package in the National Media Group in February 2015 was worth $70 million, and in February 2017 - $650 million. Only Power Machines fell in price, from $1 .45 billion to $900 million, and Tele2 - the price of its share decreased by almost half, to $100 million. But all these are trifles against the background of the growth of Severstal: Mordashov’s stake rose in price from $6 billion to $10 billion in two years.

Elena Berezanskaya, Igor Popov

steel grip

Alexey Mordashov is very different from most Russian billionaires. The way he conducts business is more reminiscent of the head of Siemens or General Electric than of one of the heroes of the Russian era of primitive accumulation of capital. He forces all his managers to get an MBA abroad. In the late 1990s, his company was the largest client of McKinsey in Eastern Europe, which he used not only for consulting, but also as a talent pool. The general director of Severstal Group did not participate in any privatization scandals, did not get involved in politics, and until recently lived not in Moscow, but in his native Cherepovets. Even when in 2001 his competitors collected incriminating evidence on him, they only unearthed a sad story from his personal life - his abandoned first wife with a teenage son receiving meager alimony.

“We didn’t seize anything, didn’t attack anyone, didn’t use government agencies or corruption,” says Alexey Mordashov in an interview with Forbes. “Everything we purchased, we bought for money.”

And only one story from Mordashov’s past still remained a secret behind seven seals. About how, in fact, he gained control over Severstal, only a few laconic statements from Mordashov himself were published.

Forbes managed to ask about this story its second main participant, the hitherto silent ex-general director of the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant, Yuri Lipukhin. From his stories it becomes clear that Mordashov bought the shares of the plant, although for money, but not for his own. And he deftly brushed his partner and, by the way, godfather Lipukhin to the side.

The history of the privatization of Severstal is the story of two generations of managers, Soviet and post-Soviet, the younger one winning and the older one losing. A kind of remake of King Lear.

“Father will not pull all the skeletons out of the closet,” Lipukhin’s son Viktor warned us, before giving the coordinates of the former general director of Severstal. “He has both a love and a hate relationship with the company.” Indeed, Yuri Lipukhin today speaks about the enterprise to which he devoted most of his life with pain and pride, and about Mordashov - either with respect or with bitter resentment. “I entrusted the privatization of the plant to Alexey, and it was my mistake,” Lipukhin says sadly in an interview with Forbes. - Because at one point he became a completely different person. He turned out to be not a master of his word.”

The biography of the triumphant hero is widely known. Mordashov was born and raised in Cherepovets. His mother worked at a metallurgical plant, and his father was one of its builders. In the early 1980s, he entered the Leningrad Institute of Engineering and Economics, where, by the way, he met Anatoly Chubais. In 1988, having returned to Cherepovets, he came to his native plant as a senior shop economist. The energetic young man was quickly noticed by his superiors. Mordashov was sent for a six-month internship at the Austrian steel company Voest Alpine.

Returning from an internship in 1990, Mordashov met with the general director of the plant. Lipukhin liked the promising economist because of his cheerfulness and enterprise. “He had great proposals for restructuring. I saw that a person thinks well and approaches business creatively,” says Lipukhin. - It was easier for the younger generation to build new economic relations. This required theoretical preparation and the absence of complexes that were typical for us.”

True, Mordashov’s promising career was almost interrupted at the very beginning. The son of the Minister of Ferrous Metallurgy Serafim Kolpakov, Sergei, interned in Austria with him. “Alexey did something inappropriate, quarreled with him over trifles,” says Lipukhin.

Mordashov recalls this story with a laugh: “Well, yes, it happened. He wanted to relax, and I wanted to study. And he complained to his father." The consequences, however, could be very serious for the future owner of Severstal. “The minister demanded that I remove it immediately,” says Lipukhin. - But I stood up for Alexei and slowly defended him. Then Alexey had a lot of such clashes. He is a hot-tempered, conflicted person.”

Lipukhin attributed these qualities to the youth of his subordinate, and in 1992 he appointed 27-year-old Mordashov as director of finance and economics.

The plant was going through difficult times at that time. After the collapse of the USSR, Severstal lost its domestic sales market. The reorientation to export - and now the company exports about 40% of its products - began under Lipukhin.

“Traders appeared - including emigrants from Russia, all smart and energetic, who came to us and said: give us 10,000 tons of metal, we will buy it from you and sell it in China or Malaysia,” says Mordashov. - We did not know the world market and did not receive normal prices. There was a period when they bought steel from us for $200 per ton, and sold it for $300 or $350.”

The traders got so rich skimming the cream off the metallurgical enterprises that they soon began to establish complete control over the cash cows. The most predatory was the Trans-World Group, which took over most of the Russian aluminum and steel industries. TWG also took note of Severstal.

According to one of the plant's managers, first Vladimir Lisin, at that time one of the top managers of Trans-World, and now the main owner of the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant, came to Cherepovets. Lisin allegedly arrived to discuss a certain project related to Moscow real estate, but Cherepovsk residents believe that his mission was more of an intelligence mission. Because after him, TWG chief Mikhail Chernoy himself came to the plant with proposals to organize trade financing and offshore schemes for the plant. Lipukhin refused Cherny, but he did not give up immediately. On behalf of TWG, young Iskander Makhmudov and Oleg Deripaska later visited Cherepovets with new proposals. However, they also received a turnaround. TWG did not wage a tough fight for the plant - it had to act on too many fronts.

“There were many objects for which there was a struggle, and we simply were not given due attention,” says Mordashov. - And we lived very locally, we didn’t go anywhere. People often called me, including representatives of large groups, and invited me, for example, to dinner in Moscow, but I simply did not answer the calls.”

Traders, including Trans-World, offered Severstal managers assistance in privatizing the enterprise. Having abandoned it, the Cherepovets team, however, applied TWG methods: they used trading structures to establish control over the plant. Mordashov easily convinced Lipukhin that the shares of the plant should be taken for himself - in order to prevent outsiders from entering the enterprise.

Privatization began in 1993. A controlling stake of 51% was to be distributed among employees through a closed subscription, and 29% was to be put up for a check auction. So the Lipukhin team had to urgently buy vouchers with all available money.

This is how they made money. The Severstal-Invest company was created to purchase shares. By law, enterprises in which state-owned companies had more than 25% could not participate in privatization. Therefore, the plant itself had only 24% in Severstal-Invest. The remaining 76% was owned personally by Mordashov. Lipukhin proposed creating a core of shareholders from members of the board of directors and other “most respected people at the plant,” but Mordashov dissuaded him. Yes, Lipukhin did not particularly insist. “Back then, few people understood privatization; they were afraid to get involved with it,” recalls Mordashov.

The plant sold metal to Severstal-Invest at low prices. The trading company used the huge margin from its resale to purchase vouchers, and at the same time shares from workers. “I practically traded with myself,” says Lipukhin. - I could set any prices, you know? I, of course, saw that this was pure... that this was fictitious work, not entirely correct commerce. However, I controlled the actions of this company, provided it with goods and loans, protected it from all regulatory organizations, from the tax inspectorate, ministries, and currency control.”

According to Lipukhin, Severstal-Invest not only received metal at reduced prices, but also took out large loans from the plant. The money accumulated quickly. And as a result of the check auction, Severstal managers managed to get almost the entire block of shares put up for auction. Competitors again underestimated the Cherepovets privatizers.

“Our competitors apparently decided that we were a weak team that accidentally got caught up in something at the plant, and they thought: well, let her sit there for now, we’ll deal with her later,” Mordashov recalls, not without gloating.

Over time, Severstal-Invest bought almost all the shares from the workforce. “Then there were very difficult times, wages were often not paid, and people willingly sold their shares,” recalls Lipukhin. Without mentioning that part of the money that went to Severstal-Invest due to the plant’s low selling prices could have been used to pay the same salaries.

Lipukhin says that he did not seek to become the owner of the plant. “I did not set out to become the owner of the plant, although this would not have been a problem.” Wasn't he concerned about the fact that he was giving control over the shares to Mordashov? Lipukhin says that he absolutely trusted his subordinate: “Alexey was completely different at that time. He understood that everything depended on me, and he had one answer to everything: as you say, so it will be.” The 60-year-old director was ready to give up his position to this talented and obedient manager: “I’ve already worked my butt off. It was time to look for a replacement."

In 1996, Mordashov became the general director of Severstal, and Lipukhin took the post of chairman of the board of directors. It was then that he finally took care of the formal ownership of shares. Those 43% of Severstal shares, which by that time had been accumulated by Severstal-Invest, were transferred to another structure - Severstal-Garant, 51% owned by Mordashov, 49% by Lipukhin.

At first, according to Lipukhin, they agreed on equal shares: “When I decided to leave, I told him - give me your proposals on how to divide these shares. He says: equally. I say: okay, I agree. After he became a director, he and his friends went to some islands, hung out for a week, and when he returned, he came and said: equally is not quite normal for me, give you 49%, and give me 51%. I didn't care. I said: come on, I agree."

Thanks to Lipukhin's compliance, there was no quarrel between the partners. When Mordashov was baptized in 1997, Lipukhin became his godfather. But even then the ex-director understood: the charter of Severstal-Garant did not give him any opportunity to influence the management of Severstal shares. “Alexey received the plant on a silver platter,” Lipukhin says bitterly. “I simply gave the plant to him and faded into the background.”

The conflict between the two privatizers emerged after the 1998 default. With the devaluation of the ruble, the plant's business went uphill sharply - after all, its costs were calculated in rubles, and its revenue was mainly in foreign currency. Net profit grew from $111 million in 1997 to $453 million in 2000. Where to put this profit - because of this, the partners quarreled.

“I had a strategy - to develop the plant, restore production, improve the environment,” says Lipukhin. - But Alexey considered it a lost cause. The development of the plant was curtailed, and God knows what began.”

Mordashov took the path of creating a diversified holding company, later named Severstal Group, and began buying up industrial assets: shares of the St. Petersburg, Tuapse and Vostochny ports, coal mines, as well as railway cars, the Kolomna Diesel Locomotive Plant, the UAZ plant. Mordashov explains the desire to diversify the business by the need to smooth out the cyclical nature of the steel business.

It was at this time that Mordashov put an end to the principle of collegial management of the plant’s shares. “In the spring of 1999, he arbitrarily, without my knowledge, bought out 17% of the shares that belonged to Severstal-Invest,” says Lipukhin. “I approached him and said: Alyosha, you can’t act like that.” His answer was extremely short: this is not written anywhere.”

This is why Lipukhin is still offended by his successor and accuses him of breaking his word. Mordashov denies the existence of any gentlemanly agreements with Lipukhin. He believes that he acted extremely honestly towards the ex-director. “His fate differs from the fate of other old directors in that as a result of privatization he was not expelled from the plant,” says Mordashov. - On the contrary, Lipukhin became one of the largest shareholders of the company. I didn’t take everything for myself, although legally I could have done so.”

By diversifying his business, Mordashov became involved in fierce competition for the first time in his career. The Zavolzhsky Motor Plant, a supplier of engines to GAZ, became the subject of his conflict with the owner of GAZ, Oleg Deripaska. Mordashov fought with the head of Evrazholding Alexander Abramov for Kuzbassugol. Another of his rivals - for supremacy in the metallurgical market - was Iskander Makhmudov. Severstal believes that it was he who financed his ex-wife’s litigation with Mordashov. Those around Makhmudov do not comment on this.

One way or another, these litigations forced Mordashov to think about protecting his property. And at the beginning of 2001, he asked Lipukhin to give him his 49% of Severstal-Garant. The ex-director claims that he received six times less for this package than he could have earned on the market. Mordashov does not name the price of the transaction, after which he became almost the sole owner of Severstal, but he flatly denies that he bought the shares at such a discount.

Lipukhin still monitors the state of affairs at the plant, where he worked for 42 years, 15 of them as director. “Blast furnace number four is down, the coke-chemical production is in serious condition, the long-rolling shop produces a third of what it can produce,” he complains. “Today the plant produces 3 million tons of rolled steel less than in 1990, although the country is experiencing an acute shortage of metal - metal prices in Russia are almost the highest in the world.”

And yet, Mordashov, having expanded his industrial empire, is now largely following the advice of his predecessor: he again realized that Severstal’s main business is still metallurgy. To gain access to the American market, Mordashov defeated the U.S. company several months ago. Steel in the fight for the bankrupt Rouge Industries - one of the largest steel companies in the United States, founded in the 1920s by Henry Ford.

“The American market is the most demanding in terms of quality,” Mordashov explains about the purchase of Rouge for $285 million. “Working with such a consumer is very important in order to raise the standards of our products.”

Someone will say that the main owner of Severstal - now Mordashov and related companies have 83% of the shares - dealt harshly with the man who at one time raised him and entrusted him with control over the plant. But against the background of the bloody showdowns of those years, the history of Severstal looks like an exception. There was no shooting or legal squabbles at the Cherepovets plant. Lipukhin turned out to be too decent a person, and Mordashov, as a Western-style manager, showed himself not so bad.

Pavel Khlebnikov

The history of the Mordashov family is rooted in the Volga region. Here, on lands rich in forests, but not very suitable for agriculture, the timber industry, the “clumsy” trade, was born. Entire families were engaged in making wooden spoons, dishes, furniture and funny toys. The Mordashov family comes from the ancient Nizhny Novgorod village of Fedoseevo, which was famous for its wood-toy makers.

Each Fedoseev family specialized in its own type of this folk craft. The Mordashovs made horses. The older men carved them out of wood, and the rest of the family primed them, painted them, and sold them at markets and fairs. The current owner of the country's metallurgical giant, the Severstal company, Alexey Mordashov, not without pride, says that Mordashov's wooden horses are exhibited at the Museum of Folk Toys in Sergiev Posad.

The ancestor of the current Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov, Ivan Mordashov, more than a hundred years ago made a miniature spoon workshop, in which four pairs of small spoons, placed under a gable canopy, reproduced all the technological processes of real production: sawing, hewing, chopping and carving spoons. The figures were set in motion by rotating the shaft. It was not a shame to give such toys even at the royal court!

Funny wooden figures were carved by both Alexei Mordashov’s great-grandfather and his grandfather….

Mordashov’s father began the metallurgical chapter in the history of the family. He was the only one of the three brothers who did not become a nesting doll maker, but graduated from the Gorky Polytechnic Institute with a degree in electrical engineering and moved to Cherepovets in the early 1960s. There, at the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant, he met Mordashov’s future mother, who worked in the equipment department. It was a classic Soviet industrial romance: with awkward smiles when meeting, secret dates after work, a long period of courtship - and a rapid transition to some very solid and artless family life. The wedding took place right in the hostel, fitting almost twenty guests into one room. And the next morning, Alexander Mordashov already went on shift.

Alexey was born in Cherepovets on September 26, 1965. In early childhood, he was diagnosed with a serious congenital injury, and, by his own admission, he already knew for sure that he would neither be a pilot nor an astronaut. However, his capabilities and desires very soon coincided. The parents were not diligent in raising their son: they did not have time for this, and the boy did not cause concern. A calm, independent child, Lesha was not afraid to be alone at home when his parents were at work. Noisy games and dangerous boyish games did not arouse his interest.

At school, Mordashov, in his own words, was a good boy; his classmates unanimously elected him class leader. The class teacher so often cited Lesha as an example and urged the students to emulate Mordashov that at some point Lesha was jokingly nicknamed Template.

He wasn't the ringleader,” his former history teacher recalls about Alexei Mordashov. – But the boy was responsible and diligent, he tried to be the best in everything, although he had no humanitarian inclinations.

Freed from physical education lessons, Lesha Mordashov could thoughtfully prepare his homework or look dreamily out the window. Perhaps as a result of these dreams, Mordashov decided to become an economist. And he pushed him to this... Karl Marx. The creator of Capital did not throw bombs at the Tsar, did not hold a rifle in his hands, did not cross seas and deserts in search of truth, yet his ideas had such a powerful impact on the world that few things could compare. By the end of school, Mordashov was confident in the basics of economic theory.

Having received secondary education, Alexey Mordashov went to enter the Leningrad Engineering and Economic Institute, considering that it was less theoretical than similar Moscow universities, closer to production and practice. Anatoly Chubais once studied and then taught at the same institute. Mordashov still remembers the times when, in the early 90s, the club of “young reformers” led by Anatoly Borisovich often met on the top floor of the institute. Mordashov still speaks of Chubais with great student gratitude, recalling that Anatoly Borisovich gave him a lot of knowledge about economic mechanisms, rare at that time, and introduced him to the works of Yegor Gaidar for the first time.

Student life became a real breakthrough for Mordashov into another life. It was as if wings had grown behind his back. There was a feeling of self-confidence, clarity in understanding the world around us and one’s own life. In the official biography of Mordashov, edited by him, this period in the life of the future oligarch is stated as follows: At the institute, Alexey Mordashov was an excellent student, a Lenin scholarship recipient and a Komsomol leader. The women of the university remember him with warmth and affectionately pronounce his simple Russian surname. He was remembered as a polite, non-arrogant, pleasant young man - a real man. Alexey was polite to everyone and spoke in the same tone with both the cleaning lady and the rector of the institute.

These heartfelt memories are not disputed even by Mordashov’s first wife, Elena, with whom the loudest scandal in the oligarch’s biography is associated.

Alexey Mordashov met his first love in his second year, right in the corridor of the institute. Lena Mityukova was a touching creature, from whom socialist realist artists were just right to paint pictures: a round-faced, ruddy, smiling girl radiated optimism and health. This cheerful, wide-eyed straight-A student was called Sunshine by her classmates. It was the Sun that blinded Lesha Mordashov in the spring of 1985.

Sophomore Mordashov was not embarrassed by the fact that Lena was almost three years older. He spoke to her, bumping into her at the door of the auditorium, and immediately invited her for a walk. After classes they went for a walk around spring Leningrad. The sun was shining brightly. The young gentleman shone with intelligence and erudition. They went to cafes and drank coffee and cakes. She was interested in talking with him and pleased to walk along the spring streets next to such an intelligent and prominent young man. Lena fell in love with Alexei Mordashov, if not at first sight, then from the first meeting. From that day on, Lena’s friends and roommates only heard about how smart, handsome, and gallant Lesha was...

What happened next? Elena Mityukova later commented on her relationship with Alyosha Mordashov at that time: “We met, met and... met.” Despite her maturity, Lena demonstrated amazing frivolity. She discovered that she was pregnant only in June, when she went home to Irkutsk. She went to see a gynecologist, and the stern doctor interrogated her: “Does the man know? Did you tell him you're pregnant? No? Need to say. So that there are no reproaches later - they say, she got rid of the child, which means I am not needed. And in general, go and think carefully about whether to keep the child or not.”

While Lena was thinking, all the deadlines had passed. The young man, having learned about the pregnancy of his beloved girl, did not jump with happiness and did not rush to circle with his beloved in his arms. He closed himself off and went away to think about the situation. Mordashov thought about it for so long that Lena and Lesha’s institute friends became worried. Before their eyes, a beautiful love story threatened to turn into a rather ugly drama. Her dorm friends pestered Lena with endless questions: “How are you doing?” Lena just waved it off: “Guys, don’t pester us, everything is fine with us.” Several more months passed, and everyone at the institute already knew that Lena was expecting a child. Alyosha Mordashov thought. Finally, after the November holidays, he made up his mind and proposed to Lena: “Marry me.”

On January 15, 1986, Alexey and Elena Mordashov had a son, Ilya. It was soon discovered that the boy was seriously ill. The birth of a child forced Mordashov to look at things from a practical point of view. Mordashov lived with his wife and son in the same room in a student dormitory. The scholarship, even the increased one, was barely enough to make ends meet. Advancement up the scientific ladder within the walls of the institute did not promise either money or any clear prospects. Mordashov had not yet managed to make connections that would allow him to get a good position in Leningrad. In an attempt to somehow earn money, Mordashov got a job as an assistant at the department, wrote term papers for students for money... But all this did not solve the problems that arose.

Alexey Mordashov did not enter graduate school. He says he didn't do it intelligently. A scientific career did not appeal to him, and life circumstances required decisive and active action, and not sitting in scientific libraries and at the department... Over time, Mordashov only became stronger in the correctness of his choice. In his opinion, the MBA degree he received in England, at Newcastle University, is valued more highly in the modern world than the dubious authority of a doctor of economic sciences.

Having thought about his prospects in St. Petersburg after graduating from university, Mordashov came to the conclusion that nothing was in store for him. He returned to Cherepovets with his wife and little son. The good name and acquaintances of his parents, who gave their whole lives to the plant, allowed Alexey in August 1988 to become a senior economist in the labor organization bureau of the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant.

The young specialist stood out from the general mass of employees because, when faced with difficulties, he did not get lost, and dealt with them like a tank. In 1988, the plant received an order from the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy: it was necessary to send a specialist with a higher education and good knowledge of German to Austria for three months to study. There were five of these throughout Severstal. Four refused, explaining that they did not speak German well enough. And Mordashov went because, with his characteristic self-confidence, he said: “I translate fluently with a dictionary.” And four years later, at the age of 27, Mordashov became director of economics and finance.

Mordashov's career was almost ruined by one phone call. The then Minister of Ferrous Metallurgy Serafim Kolpakov demanded that the director of Severstal, Yuri Lipukhin, immediately remove the young promoter. The reason for this hostility of the minister was that Mordashov beat his son, who also had an internship in Austria.

Mordashov recalls this story with a characteristic cheeky laugh: Well, yes, it was like that. He wanted to relax, and I wanted to study. And he complained to his father.

How this story could have ended for the future owner of Severstal, if not for Lipukhin’s intercession, only God knows. Yuri Lipukhin tried to smooth out the situation and, promising to deal with Mordashov, gradually defended his subordinate. Lipukhin attributed the incident to Mordashov’s youth. However, subsequently Mordashov repeatedly demonstrated toughness in his relationships with people.

In 1992, he nevertheless became director of economics and finance. The appointment was met with mixed reactions. There were dissatisfied conversations among the management and workers: Mordashov was very young, and his attitude towards metallurgy was very mediocre - in those years there was a special distrust among the people towards economists. But Lipukhin enjoyed enormous authority at the plant, and passions soon subsided.

Yuri Lipukhin was already 60 years old at that time. He was not a frail old man, but he understood that he was tired of leading work. Therefore, he began searching for a person who could be trusted to manage the plant. This was a common practice of Soviet directors: to prepare a successor for themselves. The active and serious Mordashov was suitable for this role, and Lipukhin wanted to take a closer look at him. Mordashov lived up to Lipukhin's expectations. Being proactive and independent, he was nevertheless a conscientious performer, an obedient student who showed respect for his mentor.

It is not surprising that Lipukhin entrusted Mordashov with the task of privatizing the plant. For the Soviet director, privatization was generally an incomprehensible and frightening phenomenon. Many had the feeling that, before it had yet reached its completion, privatization would end with all its instigators and participants being sent to trample the zone. It is unlikely that Lipukhin wanted to insure himself by entrusting a risky and dangerous line of work to a person who could be sacrificed if something happened... Lipukhin’s further frivolity simply does not give reason to suspect him of such foresight. Lipukhin simply decided that the educated and clever Mordashov would definitely figure out what to do with this privatization that had fallen out of nowhere... And Mordashov met his mentor’s expectations and even exceeded them. Under his leadership, a structure was created that was engaged in purchasing vouchers and then shares from workers.

This is how the Severstal-Invest company appeared, which was aptly nicknamed “Severstal-Incest” by the people for its too piquant closeness to the plant itself. Twenty-four percent of the shares of this new structure belonged to Severstal, and the rest belonged to Mordashov.

To buy back shares, the plant needed a lot of money. To earn them, Severstal-Invest resorted to the usual tactics of that time - it became an intermediary between the plant and metal buyers. This diagram looked like this: The Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant sold its metal to Severstal-Invest at a minimal price. And she, in turn, resold the metal to Western consumers at a large profit. The profit received was deposited in Severstal-Invest. This money could be used to buy shares from workers.

Buying shares from workers was not difficult. The workers did not attach much value to the “pieces of paper” that suddenly appeared in their hands. And besides, few people believed that the plant could survive. Built at the behest of Stalin, Severstal was located thousands of kilometers from the ore and coal deposits necessary for metal production. The country was in a fever from economic reforms and inflation... The plant itself was economically entirely dependent on Severstal-Invest. To convince workers to quickly sell their shares, the company did not pay wages for months. As a result, Mordashov collected 83% of the shares of the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant.

The successful completion of privatization, carried out under the leadership of Mordashov, coincided with the release of the law on joint stock companies. This law prohibited combining the positions of general director and chairman of the board of directors. As a result, Lipukhin invited his already trusted successor to take the place of director of Severstal.

However, the working class of the plant interpreted such a step by the “experienced” director in its own way at that time. They said that Lipukhin decided to wait out the incomprehensible market off-season, assigning Mordashov the trivial role of the central chairman.

But Yuri Lipukhin could not even imagine that by that moment the position of the pieces on the chessboard, which he considered his own, had changed. And in the most radical way. While working on the privatization of Severstal, Mordashov acquired some shares for the enterprise, but mostly for himself. By the beginning of 1996, a controlling stake in Severstal's shares ended up in the Severstal-Invest company led by Mordashov. That is, de jure Alexey Mordashov became the owner of the plant. And in response to the offer to become director, Mordashov brought this new information to the attention of management.

Eyewitnesses recount the circumstances of these events in different ways. They say that Mordashov did not stand on ceremony with the old management of the plant, but directly said: “I am the owner now. Anyone who is not satisfied with this can look for another place of work.” Mordashov perceives such stories in his characteristic manner - widening his eyes in surprise and bursting into cheerful laughter: What do you find so special about this? I didn’t do this illegally, it was approved by the council of the labor collective, so it wasn’t an initiative.

Really, what's wrong with that? On the contrary, we must give Alexey Alexandrovich his due: he managed to privatize one of the largest metallurgical plants in the country without unnecessary noise, blood and shooting, as often happened then.

Having changed his position at the plant, Mordashov decided to change his family life. In 1996, he officially divorced his wife. Son Ilya was 10 years old at that time. This is exactly what it took for Alexey Mordashov to make his way from a poor student to the owner of one of the most powerful and profitable metallurgical enterprises in Russia. Outwardly, these ten years were not marked by any unexpected events or dangerous turns. But this is only an appearance. Severstal was the center of confrontation between the main forces dividing the market.

At the end of 1992, Vladimir Lisin arrived in Cherepovets, who at that time represented the interests of the Trans World Group, which was pursuing a policy of aggressive expansion in the Russian metallurgical industry. Lisin arrived ostensibly to discuss a certain project related to Moscow real estate, but his mission was more of an intelligence one. Following him, the head of TWG, Mikhail Chernoy, came to the plant with proposals to organize trade financing and offshore schemes for Severstal. Lipukhin refused Cherny, but this was not the end of TWG’s attempts to “enter” the plant. On behalf of TWG, Iskander Makhmudov and Oleg Deripaska visited Severstal at regular intervals. However, they also left with nothing. Severstal was saved from the violent attacks of TWG, one might say, by a happy coincidence of circumstances. “TWG” at that time was fighting on several fronts - and it was unwise to open another one.

There were many objects for which there was a struggle, and we simply were not given due attention, Mordashov explains the reason that he managed to survive the era of property redistribution without shocks. But there is some guile in this explanation. In addition to TWG, other players in the metallurgical market, dubious international businessmen, and local criminal gangs showed interest in the plant.

Mordashov somehow miraculously managed to avoid clashes with groups interested in controlling the plant. Sometimes, knowing that representatives of one or another large group were calling him to invite him to Moscow for negotiations, he simply did not pick up the phone. This silence could last for weeks. It was necessary to have strong nerves to withstand such a game of silence. However, in addition to the external circle of interests, there was another, much more significant and subtle one - the circle of internal confrontation. The young director of Severstal, in fact, was in a hostile environment and, well aware of this, played his own game, which was aimed at conquering and strengthening his power and destroying the influence of the old leadership. So the ten-year period of Mordashov’s formation as the owner of the plant was a period of internal degeneration.

I became arrogant, cynical, tougher and more confident, says Mordashov about what happened to him in these “quiet” years. – My moral qualities are definitely deteriorating. But, probably, if I had been modest and delicate, I would not have been a director, and Severstal would not have been Severstal..

First comes power, then money, and after that comes permissiveness., - Elena Mordashova explained the reasons for the divorce several years after she broke up with her husband. – The most dangerous thing for a novice businessman is “caisson disease”. This is when it flew upside down and looked around: everything was possible. And we will – that’s it! My husband got a company car and a personal secretary. Well, right away – he’s young, handsome – girls started hanging on him. Once there was a celebration at the plant, we came together, but the whole evening Alyosha frolicked before my eyes with a young dancer. It was terribly disappointing. And then he stopped taking me with him altogether.

One day Elena returned home from her dacha and found traces of a stranger’s presence in the apartment. I asked my husband: “Who was it?” - “Secretary Olya.” - "What they were doing?" - “We drank tea.” There were no scenes of jealousy, well, maybe only one.

This is when my husband, right before my eyes, began to arrange a date with one woman, – Elena recalls. – In that situation, the family was saved by the mother-in-law, she told her son: “If anything happens, I will choose Lena and Ilya”...

But that didn't help either.

The husband experienced several more novels and loves. I guessed what was eating him. All the years he made me understand that I ruined his life, that I forced him to marry me. In fact, I didn’t drag Alexei along with me like a calf on a leash. We had everything - love and family...

Every day Elena woke up with the hope of a miracle that would return love, tenderness and trust to their relationship. Every day for several years she was faced with severe disappointment. My husband didn't spend the night at home. Or he attacked his wife with rudeness and reproaches.

Soon Alexey Mordashov moved to live with one of Severstal’s secretaries, ironically also Elena. And after the divorce, he brought an agreement on the division of property for his ex-wife to sign: a three-room apartment and a “nine” car would become her property. Shares, shares and bank accounts remained at the disposal of the spouse. According to the second agreement - on alimony - the ex-wife and son were to receive a monthly amount equal to approximately six hundred dollars, plus another six thousand dollars a year for treatment and rest. At that time, by the standards of Cherepovets, this was a huge amount. But Elena understood that in comparison with her husband’s income, this money was a beggarly and humiliating handout, especially considering her son’s serious illness and the fact that Elena, forced to take care of the child, did not work. When, according to Elena, she tried to challenge some points of the contract, her husband said: “I earned it all...”

Elena didn’t make any noise. After the divorce, she lived quietly in Cherepovets, jealously watching the successes of her ex-husband. In 2001, through one of the central newspapers, Elena Mordashova issued an “Open Letter to All Women.” She wrote:

Many years ago I married a student Alyosha Mordashov. Our son was born and life was very difficult for us. The child was seriously ill, everything fell on my shoulders - home, family, caring for my husband. During the day I nursed my son, and in the evenings I worked as a cleaner. I still have college behind me and a diploma with honors. Life gave me a choice - either family, or graduate school and career. Of course, the health of the son and the peace of mind of the husband were more important. Working as a cleaner, I earned money for our apartment..

The whole country read with ecstasy the sad story of the oligarch's ex-wife, abandoned by her husband and left without a livelihood.

…My 15-year-old Ilya recently told me: “I don’t want to be like you. You are kind, you forgive everyone everything. That’s why your life is complicated and difficult. And only bastards like my dad achieve success.”

Elena Mordashova’s next step after the letter was to go to court demanding the division of property and the collection of alimony from her ex-husband in the amount of... 20 million dollars. Elena managed not only to draw public attention to her situation, but also to achieve the arrest of a large block of shares in one of the leading enterprises in Russia - Severstal.

Elena explained her decision to apply to the court to review the old alimony agreement as follows: I knocked on Alexei’s soul, but I realized that there was no heart there. My ex-husband does not know the categories of the soul. He is indifferent to the fate of his own son. I thought Alexei’s father would awaken, but that didn’t happen. He could go weeks without seeing Ilya. He was not interested in his son's health. I just felt bad for my son. And then I decided to protect him.

Soon after the scandal broke out, the details of which splashed out in the press and on television, in narrow circles they started talking about the fact that Alexey Mordashov’s competitors, in particular Iskander Makhmudov and Oleg Deripaska, were behind the open letter and the appeal to the court, who provided financial and legal support to his abandoned wife . However, Elena Mordashova’s claims against her ex-husband were soon rejected in court. In 2002, the chairman of the board of directors of Severstal, Alexey Mordashov, defended his right to pay his son from a previous marriage no more than 10,600 rubles a month. Mordashov was pleased with the result of the court decision and, without any embarrassment, gave very direct and detailed comments. Their essence was that he had nothing to be ashamed of. Mordashov emphasized that everything he achieved, he achieved himself, and his wife has no right to demand from him even the money that he generously gives her, much less shares in the enterprise: I won't allow anyone to interfere with production. Shares are not just pieces of paper, they are an opportunity to influence a process on which the lives of thousands of people depend..

After the scandalous trial, Mordashov became even more embittered with his wife for causing her son to get into quarrels with his father. Alexey Mordashov does not see his guilt in what happened. In one of the interviews, the journalist’s question about whether he believed that over time his son would be able to forgive him caused Alexei Mordashov sincere bewilderment. Will forgive or not forgive... This is not the main thing at all“,” Mordashov answered and moved on to discuss the successes of Severstal.

Another person to whom Mordashov “has nothing to apologize for,” former general director Lipukhin, speaks of Mordashov with a mixture of bitter resentment and... undisguised respect. You can hate and despise Mordashov as a person, but as an owner and manager he was able to achieve a lot. Severstal is one of the most profitable enterprises in the industry. The former director of Severstal admits this not without pride.

In 2003, Forbes magazine ranked Alexey Mordashov in 348th place in its ranking of the richest people on the planet. He took ninth place in the list of Russian billionaires. Experts estimated his fortune at $1.2 billion. Over the next four years, Mordashov increased his fortune more than ninefold. In 2007, according to Forbes, Mordashov's fortune totaled $11.2 billion, making him one of the ten richest people in Russia.

Having become the owner of Severstal, Mordashov decisively set out to bring the plant out of the crisis and reform its activities. First of all, he brought in Western consultants and began the fight to reduce costs. He sold non-core assets belonging to the plant, such as a furniture factory, and began reducing the number of employees. Before Mordashov arrived, more than fifty thousand people worked at the plant. Mordashov reduced his staff to 37 thousand people.

Outdated production facilities were closed without delay. Instead of patching holes, Mordashov began to develop new technological lines for the production of goods that are in great demand on the market. The plant began producing steel for pipes and galvanized metal for the automotive industry. Having started to cooperate with Western partners, Mordashov increased exports. As a result of such a thoughtful and unyielding policy, the plant quickly began to rise to its feet. Even the crisis that broke out in 1998 played into Mordashov’s hands. As a result of the crisis, the dollar rose against the ruble and exports became more profitable.

At the Cherepovets plant, Mordashov created a unique system for stimulating employee activity. At each site of the enterprise there is a person responsible for reviewing initiatives. The employee must be rewarded for a sensible proposal. This could be a bonus, or it could be a promotion or appointment as the head of a working group.

Mordashov also deals decisively with those who work poorly: It’s better to fire them right away, because production doesn’t need people like that. They say that when, during an inspection in the purchasing service, several people were caught putting part of the amount from the order into their pockets, the general director fired the entire department.

One day, Mordashov and a number of other Russian businessmen were invited to America for an economic forum. At one of the conferences dedicated to cooperation with Russia, the Americans unloaded a whole range of negative arguments: they say that people steal in Russia and the like. As a sign of protest, Russian businessmen began to leave the hall. One of them later said:

We were standing outside the doors, and suddenly we heard the hall explode with laughter. Then we found out why. After listening to the reasoning of American businessmen, Mordashov stood up and indignantly declared: “Who steals? Where do they steal? Are they stealing from us? What nonsense? At my factory, I cordoned off a nickel warehouse with barbed wire, stationed machine gunners - and no one steals!”

In 2004, Americans no longer laughed at Alexei Mordashov. In December, Severstal acquired the seventh-largest American steel mill in terms of production volume, Rouge Industries Inc. This company was founded by Henry Ford to provide steel for his own car factories. In 2003, the company actually went bankrupt. Mordashov promised the Americans that he would do for the company what he once did for Severstal. Much to the surprise of the Americans, the use of Severstal’s experience on their territory made it possible to bring the “jewel in Henry Ford’s crown” out of the crisis and return the company to its lost positions.

Mordashov and his team claim that they can make any enterprise profitable. Over the past few years, he has become the owner of the Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant, the Izhora Pipe Plant in St. Petersburg, the joint-stock company Karelsky Okatysh, the Olenegorsk Mining and Processing Plant, etc. Severstal has its own airline, television center, newspapers, and under its control is the Vologda radio areas.

Not stopping there, Mordashov even began an attack on the timber processing industry. Back in 1997, he acquired the Ust-Izhora plywood mill. Subsequently, he created a joint production with the Finnish company UPM. Alexey Mordashov’s plans include the development of sawmill production in Vologda and the construction of a pulp and paper mill.

In 2003, Alexey Mordashov became Vladimir Putin's confidant in the upcoming presidential elections. Since that time, observers have not ceased to make forecasts regarding Mordashov’s future position in the “political configuration.”

There were rumors that Alexey Mordashov was considered by the federal authorities as a candidate for the post of one of the deputy prime ministers. Probably, the reason for this was Valentina Matvienko’s visit to Severstal in 2004. She was pleased with what she saw and in one of her interviews said that there was a potential member of the government in Cherepovets. Such conversations make Mordashov laugh.

At least outwardly, the oligarch Mordashov demonstrates his devotion to Cherepovets, which he is not ready to exchange for anything. Mordashov admits that Moscow suppresses and frightens him and he could not live here. In one of his interviews, Alexey Mordashov emotionally told how, on one of his rare visits to Moscow, he was amazed at how Moscow realities did not correspond to life in other Russian cities. Mordashov was especially struck by the abundance of expensive jewelry stores.

I just don’t understand where all this comes from in a rather poor country, he was perplexed.

The Vologda billionaire has a reputation for being, if not stingy, then a very frugal person. The Yak-40 aircraft on which the oligarch flies does not have an exclusive interior design and belongs to the Severstal company. Mordashov does not have his own yacht. Even the Swiss “Frank Muller” watches that he prefers are not something outstanding by the standards of the Russian financial elite: they cost about 30 thousand dollars. When choosing cars, Mordashov also adheres to very modest requirements, giving preference to production cars. For a long time, Mordashov drove a Volvo. One day, journalists witnessed how, at the capital’s airport, Alexey Mordashov very persistently demanded monetary compensation for a buckle torn from the bag of one of the girls who accompanied the businessman on the trip. Mordashov prefers to give inexpensive gifts to foreign business partners, for example, Russian nesting dolls that are dear to his heart. Mordashov is a fierce critic of the gap between rich and poor in Russia. But the oligarch’s concerns about social inequality do not find a response in the hearts of the proletariat. For the workers of the American plant that Severstal bought, the Russian oligarch’s thriftiness resulted in a significant reduction in their “unreasonably high” salaries.

But, being thrifty, Alexey Mordashov tries to live up to the idea of ​​himself as a socially responsible representative of large business. Mordashov is on the board of trustees of the Bolshoi Theater, supports sports, and participates in social activities.

Despite his Vologda origin, Mordashov is considered a member of the “St. Petersburg team.” He is one of the oligarchs of the North-West who showed up in Moscow after Putin’s inauguration. Alexei Mordashov was brought closer to Vladimir Putin by his friendship with the St. Petersburg oligarch Vladimir Kogan. At one time, Vladimir Kogan laid claim to a controlling stake in Severstal. However, Kogan did not have enough resources to purchase the plant. He limited himself to Severstal Bank - Metallurgical Commercial Bank.

As they say, Kogan got the bank for almost nothing. You could even say that Mordashov gave it to him, leaving himself a purely nominal percentage of the shares. According to experts, Mordashov thereby demonstrated his loyalty to the “St. Petersburg group.” Whether this is true or not, in the list of “second wave oligarchs” who replaced the adventurous figures of the era of wild capitalism, Mordashov occupies a strong position as a state-minded businessman.

Detailed biographies of the builders of oligarchic capitalism in Russia will not be written anytime soon. Historians still have to work with archives and newspaper periodicals of that time in order to answer the exciting question: how and why people who did not have a legal fortune suddenly became owners of huge enterprises, mines, ports... These questions will be asked more than once not only by ordinary people, journalists, but also the state.

And then, probably, many of the elderly Russian oligarchs will wake up in their beds at night. They would pay dearly for everyone to forget about the skeletons in their closets. Or by that time, the current oligarchs will be replaced by those who were brought up on the example of their ruthlessness, composure and uncompromisingness - their own children and the children of those who were thrown overboard the ship of modernity, which in the early 90s headed for capitalism?

In 2004, the first Russian issue of Forbes magazine chose Alexei Mordashov as the main character of the issue. An article under the telling title “Grit of Steel” was dedicated to him. The magazine reconstructed the history of Alexey Mordashov's entry into business and spoke in detail about all the mechanisms that allowed him to gain control over the metallurgical giant. A week later, the Cherepovets newspaper Rech, financed by Mordashov, reprinted the Forbes material on its pages. But when comparing these two texts, it became clear that the material published in Rech was noticeably different from the article in Forbes. The reprinted article was thoroughly edited: someone's caring hand cut out from the article the most painful moments for Alexey Mordashov concerning the privatization of Severstal and his relationship with the old management of the plant...

With history, alas, such things do not happen. Although the time to draw conclusions as to whether the ninth wave of Russian capitalism turned out to be evil or good for Russia is still very early. There is too much personal in assessments of the lives and activities of Russian billionaires. However, the personal goes further and further every year.

Elena Mordashova, the ex-wife of the “steel king”, lives in Moscow. Today she works in a commercial company and does not want to discuss the fate and actions of her husband. She considers her attempt six years ago to take revenge for her ruined life and abandoned son to be stupid and naive. She is not going to repeat it. The one who has more money is right, she is sure.

Mordashov’s son, Ilya, did not want to take his father’s surname and took his mother’s surname. Ilya studies at the institute, where he is known not as the exiled heir to the steel empire, but as a taciturn and reserved guy. Ilya doesn’t tell anyone about his father, whom he last saw more than seven years ago.

The former general director of Severstal, Yuri Lipukhin, after his “overthrow” from the post of general director of the plant, gave only one long interview. Lipukhin's children and relatives protect their elderly father from the intrusive attention of the press and those who are trying to use the former head of the plant to attack Mordashov. Most of the time Lipukhin lives in Sochi, reading books and tending to the garden.

In his new marriage, Alexei Mordashov had three children...

The oligarch found a job for his beloved just a hundred meters from the marital bedroom

Ranked fourth in the Forbes rankings ($ 24 billion) Alexey Mordashov gave his third wife Marina a private primary school, Wunderpark. Now the former fashion model, who gave birth to three charming children to the oligarch, can observe their progress in studies from the windows of the boudoir. After all, they look directly onto the buildings of this elite institution near Moscow, where a month of training costs 132 500 rubles.

In fact, Marina's profession is unknown. She is called a model simply out of respect for her current social status and perceived beauty. After all, no one saw the girl. Maybe she's not a beauty at all. Also, some sources indicate that Marina was a dancer, a waitress and even a stand performer. That is, a representative of not very intellectual professions, far from the management of a private educational institution. By the way, official representatives of the oligarch also do not confirm her status as a wife, proposing to call the woman simply a life partner.

The uncertain status does not allow Marina to claim the assets of her cohabitant in the event of a divorce. Having already been burned twice in similar trials, which were also covered by all the central media, the billionaire laid out straws just in case. At the same time, the owner of Severstal clearly values ​​his chosen one and behaves with her following the example of the Tajik nouveau riche. He locked his “prey” in a golden cage in a palace near Moscow, does not attend any social events with her, and even bought her a business within walking distance of her bedroom.

From the estate Mordashovs in Wunderpark, like from Papa Carlo’s closet to the theater, there is a secret door with a combination lock. Through her, 10-year-old Masha, 7-year-old Anastasia and 5-year-old Daniil go to primary school and kindergarten. These kids are today considered one of the richest heirs in Russia. Each of them accounts for almost $7 billion.

Alexey Alexandrovich’s three adult offspring from two previous marriages can only dream of this. For example, the eldest son Ilya received nothing at all.

Mordashovs' estate. Photo by Ruslan Voronoi

Lover-dancer

The scandalous separation of the “steel king” Alexey Mordashov with his first wife Elena Mityukova opened a series of high-profile divorces of Russian oligarchs, who in unison exchanged their fighting friends for young upstarts.

The marriage of students of the Leningrad Engineering and Economic Institute can be called forced. Possessing the texture of a Hollywood western hero, Alexey married Elena after learning that she was pregnant. The two “Leninist” scholarships that young parents received were not enough. Alexey had to work as a hack in three places, and Elena worked as a cleaner in the evenings. But the relationship began to crack not during the difficult student times, but a few years later, when the couple returned to Cherepovets and Alexey began to make really big money at Severstal.

First comes power, then money, and then permissiveness,” Elena Mordashova explained the reasons for the divorce. “Once there was a celebration at the plant, we came together, but the whole evening Alyosha frolicked before my eyes with a young dancer. It was terribly disappointing. And then he stopped taking me with him altogether.

During the divorce, Mordashov gave his ex-wife a three-room apartment and a car, and also paid child support in the amount of one thousand dollars a month. Later, Elena tried to sue for at least $20 million, but, of course, she failed miserably.

The oligarch's first wife, Elena Mityukova, was left penniless. Photo: Valery Melnikov/Kommersant

Accounting skills

Alexey Alexandrovich’s second chosen one was also called Elena. She served as an accountant at a company where Mordashov was the financial director. The classic office romance ended in marriage. In 1999, Mordashov had a second son, Kirill, and a year later, Nikita. The oligarch admits that he was a bad husband and father back then. Business always came first for him. I needed to earn my first billion, not change diapers.

I became arrogant, cynical, tougher and more confident. But, probably, if I had been modest and delicate, I would not have been a director, and Severstal would not have been Severstal,” the capitalist explains his life position.

The marriage lasted about 10 years. The divorce went quietly. Accountant Elena knew too much to leave her penniless, and Mordashov signed a settlement agreement providing the woman with a comfortable existence. The sons were not left out either.

More recently, when alimony payments ended, he bought them off with 65 percent of the shares of the gold mining company Nordgold, whose capitalization analysts estimate at about $1.3 - 1.5 billion.

Thus, 19-year-old Kirill and 18-year-old Nikita Mordashov received shares worth $420 - 490 million each. Such money may have gone to their heads, but an experienced accountant mother is unlikely to allow them to squander their inheritance.

Pussy by nameLady M

The oligarch spent the May holidays with his family on his 64-meter sports yacht Lady M. The boat, worth about $60 million, cruised along the picturesque Turkish coast, between the cities of Datca and Marmaris.

It’s easy to guess that the letter “M” in the name of the yacht means Maria. For the same reason, the bow of the vessel is decorated with a caryatid in the form of a steel pussy, apparently symbolizing the Lady herself.

Forbes, the main shareholder of Severstal, Alexey Mordashov, became the richest businessman in Russia for the first time. His fortune is $16.8 billion, and this is $4 million more than last year's leader of the Russian list of billionaires - NOVATEK founder Leonid Mikhelson, who took second place. Third place is still occupied by the owner of the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant, Vladimir Lisin (16.1 billion).

It was Mordashov’s face that appeared on the cover of the very first issue of Forbes magazine, published in Russia in 2004, although at that time he occupied only 9th place in the “golden hundred” of oligarchs. In an interview with the publication, Mordashov then said that he became a “steel magnate” gradually: he himself comes from Cherepovets, and when choosing a profession, he followed in the footsteps of his parents, who worked at the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant.

uznayvse.ru

In early childhood, he was diagnosed with a serious congenital injury, and, by his own admission, he already knew for sure that he would neither be a pilot nor an astronaut. At school, Mordashov, in his own words, was a good boy; his classmates unanimously elected him class leader. The class teacher so often cited Lesha as an example and urged the students to emulate Mordashov that at some point Lesha was jokingly nicknamed Template.

Later, Mordashov graduated from the Leningrad Engineering and Economic Institute; in 1988, the young specialist returned to his hometown and began working at the plant, to which his family devoted their whole lives. The future oligarch began as a senior economist, successfully moving up the career ladder. At the age of 27, he was noticed by the director of the plant, Yuri Lipukhin, and in 1993 he was tasked with privatizing the enterprise. Three years later, the Severstal-invest company created by Lipukhin bought out 43% of the plant’s shares, and in the late 1990s Mordashov moved Lipukhin from the post of director of the plant to the position of chairman of the board of directors, and in 1999 bought out 17% of the plant’s shares.

uznayvse.ru

Despite his Vologda origin, Mordashov is considered a member of the “St. Petersburg team.” He is one of the oligarchs of the North-West who showed up in Moscow after Putin’s inauguration. Alexei Mordashov was brought closer to Vladimir Putin by his friendship with the St. Petersburg oligarch Vladimir Kogan.

As Moskovsky Komsomolets writes, financial market participants speak positively about Mordashov, emphasizing that he “did not rob the country, making money from sad loans-for-shares auctions and other speculation.” As analysts emphasize, it was Mordashov who actively supported Russia’s accession to the WTO and it was his recommendation that President Putin took into account in this matter. Russian metallurgists and Mordashov personally benefited greatly from the devaluation of the ruble, increasing revenue and profitability.

Kommersant.ru

Director of IC Forum Roman Parshin noted in a conversation with MK that the increase in Mordashov’s wealth is due to the fact that steel prices are rising, but did not rule out the influence of the company’s strong lobbying resource.

The price and demand for steel directly determine the profit of Severstal and the income of Mr. Mordashov. Severstal's revenue in the first half of 2017 increased by 38.1%. At the same time, Severstal’s lobbying resource also works well: most recently, at the end of July, Gazprombank sold Severstal the rights to claim the debt of Metal Group LLC for 12 billion rubles and sold it for half its value. By the way, Metal Group, in turn, holds a license to develop the central part of the Yakovlevsky iron ore deposit - this is a tasty morsel for any metallurgical enterprise, because the ore mined there does not require beneficiation. So to speak, the “golden grail”, or rather, the steel one: 9.6 billion tons of excellent quality ore.

At the end of spring, Alexey Mordashov’s yacht “Lady M” caused a sensation among European journalists. The ship, worth more than $50 million, is moored in several European ports. Thus, in the Spanish city of Malaga it has become a real attraction. Of course, the 65-meter three-deck ship with a helipad, six double guest cabins and seven double cabins for 14 crew members has a maximum speed of 28 knots (51 km/h) and is capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 8 days.

It is also known about Mordashov that he is interested in poetry, painting, and is fond of active winter sports, in particular, alpine skiing.

Lenta.ru

The owner of Severstal got married for the first time at the age of 19, when he was still in his 2nd year at the institute. His chosen one was 5th-year student Elena, originally from Irkutsk. Soon they had a son. In 1996, Alexey and Elena divorced. According to his ex-wife, because of Alexey’s rapid career growth, big money, the permissiveness that accompanied their appearance and his infidelities. In 2002, a woman tried through the court to obtain a share in her ex-husband’s capital, but to no avail. The court did not satisfy her demands.

uznayvse.ru

A few years later, the oligarch’s second wife was his work colleague, economist Elena, who worked in the accounting department of the plant. Soon they officially got married. The couple had two sons: in 1999 - Kirill, in 2000 - Nikita.

24smi.org

In 2015, Forbes reported that the billionaire already had a new life partner, whose name is Larisa. He allegedly also gave birth to new heirs. However, this information was not confirmed either by the oligarch himself or by his representatives.

17 June 2017, 21:04

Why are we all talking about the Whisperer and the Giraffe... We also have other people in big business.

Alexey Mordashov was born in Cherepovets in 1965. His father graduated from the Gorky Polytechnic Institute with a degree in electrical engineering and worked at the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant.

Parents were not zealous in raising Alyosha. They didn't have time for that, and the boy wasn't causing any concern. Calm, independent child. At school, Mordashov was correct; his classmates unanimously elected him class leader. The class teacher used Lesha as an example so often that at some point he was nicknamed Template.

Komsomol member and future member of the CPSU Alexey Mordashov graduated with honors from the Leningrad Engineering and Economics Institute, where he met Anatoly Chubais, who taught there. After the first year, I came to his department as an assistant. Obviously, this was the first success of the future “steel king”.

At that time, Alexey actively attended the “circle of young economists”, which was headed by Chubais. This circle included people such as Alexey Kudrin, Pyotr Mostovoy, Vladimir Kogan, whose names would soon become known throughout Russia. At the same time, Mordashov did not get lost against their background. Chubais even persuaded him to go to graduate school and stay in Leningrad, but Alexey always believed that it was better to be the first guy in the village than the second in the city, and returned home.

There he got a job as a senior economist at a metallurgical plant. The young specialist immediately attracted the attention of management, who sent him for an internship at the Austrian steel company VoestAlpine. But there Mordashov quarreled with the son of the USSR Minister of Ferrous Metallurgy Serafim Kolpakov. Things came to a fight. Kolpakov demanded that the general director of the Cherepovets Metallurgical Plant, Yuri Lipukhin, immediately fire the insolent man from the plant. But he defended his employee.

Mordashov was very lucky - Lipukhin’s wife liked him. And when the time came to corporatize ChMK, it was she who persuaded her husband to trust the 27-year-old financial director. As a result, Yuri Lipukhin was left without a position and without a plant.

In 1996, Mordashov became the general director of the plant management company Severstal, and Lipukhin took the post of chairman of the board of directors. The management accumulated 43% of shares in the Severstal-Invest company bought from employees, and later transferred them to another structure - Severstal-Garant.

At first, according to Lipukhin, the partners agreed on equal shares in this company.

“After he became a director, he and his friends went to some islands and hung out for a week. And when he returned, he came and said: equally is not quite normal for me, give you 49%, and give me 51%,” Lipukhin later said. - I didn't care. I said: come on, I agree."

When net income rose from $111 million to $453 million in 2000, there was disagreement over what to do with the money. “In the spring of 1999, Mordashov arbitrarily, without my knowledge, bought out 17% of the shares that belonged to Severstal-Invest,” said Lipukhin. “I approached him and said: Alyosha, you can’t act like that.” His answer was extremely short: this is not written anywhere.” Mordashov denies the existence of any gentlemanly agreements.

Yuri Lipukhin was his godfather when Alexey decided to convert. In 2011, the veteran died of a heart attack in Canada; his son Victor is taking care of his affairs. Mordashov headed JSC Severstal, which served as the basis for the creation of the diversified holding company Severstal Group. Industrial assets gradually came into his ownership - shares of the St. Petersburg, Tuapse and Vostochny ports, coal mines, railway cars, Kolomna Diesel Locomotive Plant, UAZ...

In general, Mordashov burst into the ranks of the newest oligarchs at great speed, displacing such bison as Abramovich and Potanin. Thanks to his stranglehold on the Vologda region, he earned the nickname Iron Boy. And Mordashov himself says about himself this way: “Tanks are not afraid of dirt.”

A separate conversation is Mordashov’s personal life. In 2001, Elena, the ex-wife of a billionaire, published an “Open Letter to All Women” in one of the newspapers.

Here are the quotes. “Many years ago I married a student Alyosha Mordashov. Our son was born and life was very difficult for us. The child was seriously ill, everything fell on my shoulders - home, family, caring for my husband. During the day I looked after my son, and in the evenings I worked as a cleaner... I earned money for our apartment.”

And five years later, Alexey Mordashov became a millionaire and the owner of factories, newspapers, and ships. And he left. Then he divided the property, as befits a rich husband: for his wife - a squalid apartment, an old "nine". For himself - everything he owns... There could be no talk of justice.

He said: “And you couldn’t think. If you even try to encroach on anything of mine, I will deprive you of everything left, I will take your son away from you. You don’t want Ilya to suffer without you, do you?” I had no doubt then that one day I could “wake up” next to my own head...

During the divorce in 1996, the wife and child received an apartment in Cherepovets, a VAZ-2109 car and a small amount of money. Alimony for the maintenance of their common child Ilya (born in 1985) was paid by the entrepreneur in the amount of 106 times the minimum wage (in 2003 the minimum wage was 600 rubles). That is 63,600 rubles.

Elena tried in court to obtain the right to a share in her ex-husband’s property, but achieved nothing.

Mordashov’s new wife was also Elena, with whom he had a real office romance. She worked as an accountant at Severstal. They bumped into each other in the corridors and on the stairs, swam together in the pool on adjacent paths, and in June 1997 they got married.

“In September 1999, our son Kirill was born. Alexey was with me during childbirth, holding my hand. The next morning he gave me pearl earrings and a necklace,” Mordashov’s second wife later said. - A few days before 2001, I gave Alexey, as he himself says, the best New Year's gift in his life - his son Nikita... Alexey simply adores babies. He is a very gentle dad."

Now Mordashov has a third wife, Marina. They have two daughters and a son.

The eldest, Masha, studies at the Wunderpark school near Moscow, which was opened by her mother, five-year-old Anastasia is being raised at home with three-year-old Daniil. A month of education in 1st grade at Wunderpark Primary School costs 132,500 rubles.

The hot temper of Alexei Mordashov makes itself felt from time to time. So, one day he caused a scandal to the employees of the business terminal of Vnukovo-3 airport. The oligarch was indignant that one of his “girlfriends,” who accompanied him on the flight, had a torn buckle on her lady’s backpack. Because of this, the “steel king” scolded the airport staff, demanding to pay “a few bucks” for the damage.

Alexey Mordashov owns the yacht Lady M (65 m). She is not on the list of the most expensive yachts in the world, but nevertheless her owner has something to be proud of. He owns the most expensive aluminum yacht, PalmerJohnson, built in the USA. Lady M offers luxurious accommodation for 12 guests in 6 cabins. There is also a seven-meter swimming pool and a helipad on board. At a maximum speed of 28 knots (about 50 km/h), the boat is capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 8 days. The bow of the yacht is decorated with a metal figure of a one and a half meter powerful jaguar.