#15 Jindal family
Forbes places the Jindal family at no. 80 in the world with a net worth of $10.9 billion built from steel.
Matriarch Savitri Jindal, 62, lives in Hisar north of Delhi and her son Sajjan, one of nine children, runs JSW Steel from Mumbai, India’s financial capital while her youngest son Naveen is responsible for the family conglomerates energy business.
Savitri became the chairperson after her husband and founder of the empire, O.P. Jindal, died in a helicopter crash in 2005.
According to Forbes the Jindal fortune has plummeted almost a fifth as JSW Steel cut back production in Karnataka following a ban on iron ore mining amid corruption scandals that brought down the southern Indian state’s rulers.
Forbes reports Jindal Steel & Power’s market worth “fell as it got into tangle with the environment ministry. Naveen is a big donor to his alma mater, the University of Texas in Dallas, which has named its management school after him.”
#16 Andrey Melnichenko
Andrey Melnichenko – 81st richest person in the world according to Forbes data – is the youngest of the relatively youthful Russia billionaires boys club. In 1993 he co-founded MDM Bank with Sergei Popov and the pair then moved into coal, fertilizer and pipes.
Self-made Melnichenko is now worth $10.8 billion after adding more than $2 billion over the last year. He first appeared on the list in 2004 when he was only 32 years old and if things pan out the way he is planning he may soon move way up the ranks.
Melnichenko last year increased his share of SUEK (Siberian Coal Energy Company), number one Russian coal producer and exporter with 2011 output of 92 million tonnes, to more than 75%. According to Forbes “he’s ready to take the coal maker, as well as Eurochem, the country’s largest mineral-fertilizer producer, public.”
Already a leader in phosphate and nitrogen fertilizer, Eurochem (Melnichenko is said to own more than 90%), is spending $5.3 billion on two new potash mines in Russia that should start producing next year with a capacity of more than 2 million tonnes per annum.
Like his fellow Russians, Melnichenko has a soft spot for mega-yachts, but unlike Abramovich he did not go for the biggest just the most unique. Designed by minimalist Philippe Starck, the 119 m long and 18 m wide yacht believed to have cost over $300 million making it the most expensive ever built. It is named “A” after his wife Aleksandra.
Next >>> #17 – #19: Three ex-Soviet tycoons into copper, potash and nickel make it big, very big
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