#42 Chen Fashu
$2.7 billion, 51, Fuzhou – China. Fashu is chairman of the New Huadu Group. Though he is one of China’s most powerful entrepreneurs, Chen has been enduring a high-profile setback: He paid Yunnan Hongta Group $349 million in 2009 for a 13.6% stake in Yunnan Baiyao Group, one of China’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, but Yunnan Hongta Group didn’t deliver the shares, and the matter is in court.
He’s in charge of conglomerate with mining interests including Zijin, China’s largest gold mine which recently bought Australia’s Norton Gold. Fashu earned the title as China’s Bill Gate after he set up a charity with 90% of his Huada group shares.
#42 Patrice Motsepe
$2.7 billion, 50, Johannesburg – South Africa. Educated a lawyer he built African Rainbow Minerals with interests in platinum, nickel, chrome, iron ore, manganese, coal, copper and gold with his sister, Bridgette starting in 1994 after the fall of Apartheid. Owns Mamelodi Sundowns, top South Africa soccer club.
(Image: Patrice Motsepe, AFCON 2012 winners, YouTube)
#43 Alberto Benavides
$2.7 billion, 91, Lima – Peru. Benavides and family own 28% of Buenaventura, the country’s biggest gold and silver miner. Holds a masters in geology from Harvard. (Benavides is missing from Forbes’ list.)
#45 Alexander Frolov
$2.4 billion, 47, Moscow – Russia. Holds a doctorate from Moscow’s Institute of Physics and Technology and is chief executive of Evraz Group, in which Alexander Abramov, number 26 on the list and #14 Roman Abramovich also have stakes. Evraz listed in London in November 2011.
#46 Viktor Nusenkis
$2.4 billion, 58, Moscow – Russia. A native of Ukraine, he founded Energo Concern in 1993 and quickly became Ukraine’s number one coal trader.
During the Soviet era, Nusenkis became director of a Ukrainian coal mine and was among the first to begin exporting coal independently, despite communist rules.
#47 Tor Peterson
$2.4 billion, 47, Zug – Switzerland. A product of Duke University, Forbes reports he is the lone American among the billionaires at commodities trading giant Glencore International.
A political science and French graduate from Duke University, he previously spent five years working for Phibro-Salomon in New York, London and the Ivory Coast.
#48 Angela Bennett and Michael Wright
$2.3 billion, 67 and 74, Perth Australia. “Heirs to a half-share in the same Rio Tinto royalty stream that has enriched Gina Rinehart,” reports Forbes. Like Rinehart’s own children the reclusive brother and sister are locked in bitter legal battles with number four on the list ‘Big G’ over income from Australia’s rich iron ore deposits in Pilbara.
#49 Robert Friedland
$2.3 billion, 61, Singapore. Born in Chicago, Friedland is now closely asssociated with Canada’s mining industry.
His Ivanhoe Mines (now majority owned by Rio Tinto) is selling all its assets to raise funds to complete the 66%-owned Oyu Tolgoi mine, a $13 billion gold-copper-silver project in Mongolia. Friedland’s other concern Ivanplats may launch a $1 billion IPO this year.
Forbes reports Friedland “made his first fortune stumbling on large nickel deposit at Voisey’s Bay in Canada” which he sold for over $3 billion in 1996.
$2.2 billion, 81, Jakarta, Indonesia. Not strictly a fortune made from resources, but Hamami’s equipment played a huge role in Indonesia’s coal mining industry which has delivered its fair share of billionaires on the list. A trained fighter pilot according to Forbes, Hamami’s wealth is built on Caterpillar dealerships; he opened the first in 1971 and his son now runs the empire.
$2.2 billion, 48, Lima – Peru. Hochschild leads the eponymous mining and cement group founded by his great uncle in 1911. Originally a major supplier of tin, Hochschild Mining is now listed in London and operates precious metals mines in Peru, Argentina and Mexico.
Forbes reports “in 1998 during a period of political unrest in Peru, Hochschild survived an attack by gunman that claimed the life of his father. Hochschild was kidnapped by the attackers, but was released six days later.”
(Image: Eduardo Hochschild, with John Inchaustegui, Youtube)
#52 Alex Beard
$2.1 billion, 44, London – UK. The fifth Glencore International billionaire on the list, Beard joined the Swiss giant in 1995 and now heads up its oil business. Forbes reports he is a graduate of Oxford with a biochemistry major.
#53 Zdenek Bakala
$1.9 billion, 51, Geneva – Switzerland. Czech-born Bakala’s coal and mining empire is housed in New World Resources and Ferrexpo. NWR is rumoured to be taken over by Poland’s JSW, creating a $6 billion coal giant.
Forbes reports Bakala “recently invested in a new vineyard in South Africa, one of his cycling hot spots. He is married to a former Miss Czechoslovakia.”
(Image: Zdenek Bakala, Interview with Prague Leadership Institute, Youtube)
#54 Andrei Klyamko, #55 Vadim Novinsky
$1.9 billion both, 50 and 48, St. Petersburg – Russia and Kiev, Ukraine. Forbes reports Klyamko and Novinsky together own Ukraine’s Smart Holding Group, “which has a 24% stake in Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov’s iron ore producer Metinvest.”
#56 Anatoly Skurov
$1.8 billion, 59, Moscow – Russia. Skurov wealth originated with coal miner Sibuglemet which he founded in 1995 with fellow Russain billionaires and which he still heads, but the bulk of his fortune now resides in potash producer Uralkali.
#57 Kiki Barki
$1.7 billion, 72, Jakarta – Indonesia. Barki is the Muslim nation’s 10th richest person and a coal industry veteran. His Harum Energy went public in 2010 and is now run by his son. Forbes reports Barki received his engineering degree at Beijing University and works to further China-Indonesia trade.
$1.8 billion, 38, Kiev – Ukraine. Zhevago’s money is thanks to his ownership of iron ore producer Ferrexpo. He also serves in the country’s parliament for the opposition but Forbes says he is “mulling moving operations to London.”
#59 Lev Leviev
$1.7 billion, 56, London – UK. An Israeli citizen born in Leviev is the Middle-Eastern country’s 10th richest person. He was born in Uzbekistan and “made his name undercutting the De Beers diamond cartel, striking his own deals with diamond-producing countries like Russia and Angola.”
(Image: Lev Leviev, Speech at Jewish Institute of Queens, Youtube)
#60 Igor Altushkin
$1.6 billion, 41, Yekaterinburg – Russia. Altushkin is the founder and largest shareholder of RMK, Russia’s third-largest copper producer and more recently moved into coal and zinc in Russia. Forbes reports, “he started out in the early 1990s trading scrap metals.”
$1.6 billion, 52, Calgary – Canada. Edwards, vice-chairman of Canada Natural Resources, is number 17 on Canada’s rich list and is the only exclusively oil and gas person among mining billionaires. About 20% of oil sands crude is extracted through conventional open pit mining methods.
Forbes reports Edwards owns part of the Calgary Flames hockey franchise an ski resorts in the Canadian Rockies and “along with Bill Gates, Edwards has invested in Carbon Engineering, a start-up focused on developing technologies to capture and harness carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”
(Image: N. Murray Edwards, IDEA Award Unveiling, Youtube)
#62 Vladimir Iorich
$1.6 billion, 53, Zug – Switzerland. Iorich, a Russian-born German citizen, made his original fortune as a large shareholder of Russian mining and steel company Mechel AOA, run by Russian billionaire Igor Zyuzin.
$1.5 billion, 54, Florida – USA. A century ago Cline’s grandfather mined coal with a pickaxe in Beckley. At age six, Bloomberg reports that Cline’s Father, paid him a penny for each paper bag he filled with dirt from under the porch of their single-story, white frame house in West Virginia; In two years, Chris had removed so much dirt that the porch collapsed.
In 1980, his father bought out his business partner and gave the share to Cline, then 21. Since then he has turned that $50,000 investment into control over 4 billion tonnes of coal
#64 Yasseen Mansour
$1.6 billion, 50, Cairo – Egypt. Mansour once listed by Interpol for fraud is the former CEO of Palm Hills Developments, Egypt’s second largest real estate developer; however, he remains chairman of the board. Currently the majority wealth is invested in the family’s favourite pass time: being largest seller of GM vehicles in the world.
$1.5 billion, 52, Moscow – Russia. Mutsoev’s originally worked as a dump truck driver after finishing school. He went on to fund a clothing manufacturer and then become part owner of a tube producing factory. Most of Mutsoev’s money is carefully placed shopping malls and an 8% stake in Uralkai, a fertilizer producer.
#66 Bulat Utemuratov
$1.5, Astana – Kazakhstan. Utemuratov sold stakes in Kazakhstan’s largest zinc miner, Kazzinc, as well as Altyntau Gold to Glencore.
Utermuratov’s is reported by Forbes to be a close advisor to Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbaev, serving as Kazakhstan’s special envoy for cooperation affairs with Kyrgyzstan.
(Image: Bulat Utemuratov, KTKnews, Youtube)
$1.4, 61, Oklahoma – United States. Joining coal company MAPCO as an assistant general counsel, Craft became president in 1987. For leading the company through conversion, expansion across Appalachia and increased MAPCO’s revenue to $390 million Craft was rewarded with a large stake in the company.
(Image: Joe Craft III, Coal in Kentucky, Youtube)
$1.4 billion, 63, Jakarta – Indonesia. As the Jakarta Globe explains, “Soeryadjaya has struck gold with palm oil plantations, coal mining, toll roads, consumer goods and telecommunications.”
Soeryadjaya, son to a billionaire did not start working until his mid-forties when his family lost much of its wealth in 1993. With their remaining money Soeryadjava started Saratoga Capital and began investing in coal and is now one of five co-owners to Adaro Energy, the second largest producer of thermal call in Indonesia.
#69 Huang Zelan
$1.3 billion,56, Ganzhou – China. In 1994 Zelan borrowed $800 to purchase a tungsten mine. Flash forward and now he is chairman of Chongyi Zhangyuan Tungsten, one of the country’s largest tungsten producers with a market cap of over $12 billion.
$1.3 billion,75, Delhi – India. In the 70’s Singal formed a company, Bhushan Steel, to make door hinges. Today, as Forbes reports, “it’s a leading supplier of specialized steel to automakers like Maruti, Mahindra & Mahindra and General Motors, and to consumer-durables majors like LG and Whirlpool.”
#71 Chris Wallin
$1.3 billion, Brisbane – Australia. Wallin is said to be low key. In fact, despite being worth over a billion dollars he’s lived in the same suburban house for twenty years,
Once the chief geologist for the Queensland Government, Wallin quit and used his industry insight to invest in Japan-based JFE Steel.
$1.2 billion, 63, Santiago – Chile. Born into a family that already had a billionaire, Rossi created his wealth through the Angelini Group which has known investments in fishing, mining, timber and natural gas.
#73 Jim Justice II
$1.2 billion, 60, West Virginia – United States. When his father passed away, Justice inherited Bluestone Industries and went about rapid fire acquisitions of coal reserves. In 2009 he sold the company’s Virginia based assets to Russian-based Mechel for $436 million.
$1.2 billion, 51, Xiamen – China. Forbes reports that, Ke owns 2% of Hong Kong- and Shanghai-listed Zijin Mining Group, a company that also has ties to fellow billionaire Chen Fashu. Hengxing real estate properties include the Xiamen Fortune Center, the Changchun Hengxing International City Complex and the Longyan Zijinshan Sports Park.
#75 Pyotr Kondrashev
$1.2 billion, 62, Solikamsk – Russia. Kondrashev, worked at the Silvinit fertilizer factory for 35 years until he became head of the company. He then smartly privatized the company, became one of the largest owners and sold his stake.
#76 Andrei Kozitsyn
$1.2 billion, 51, Verkhniaya Pyshma – Russia. Kozitsyn heads Russian copper producer Urals Mining and Metals Company. Having grown up and studied in Verkhnaya Pyshma he went worked as a mechanic at Uralelectromed, the main Urals Mining factory. From 1995 to 2002 he was general director.
#77 Anatoly Lomakin
$1.2 billion, 59, Moscow – Russia. In the early 90’s Lomakin convinced three of Russia’s largest fertilizer producers to unite and create the International Potassium Company. Not even a decade later the groups disbanded and Lomkin sued, winning $60 million, against one of the previous partners for compensation.
$1.2 billion, 54, Ekaterinburg – Russia. His first endeavour was starting a furniture business in 1991. Then several years later he began trading in scrap iron. A decade later he founded, what is now known as Maxi Group. Forbes reports that Maximov invested wisely during Russia’s “economic crisis, buying sSberbank stock when prices were low and later selling at nearly five times the purchase price.”
#79 Garibaldi Thohir
$1.2 billion, 46, Jakarta – Indonesia. Thohir and several other investors purchased coal outfit Adaro Energy in 2005. Now he runs the company, which happens to be the largest single-site coal producer in the southern hemisphere.
#80 William Macaulay
$1.1 billion, 66, Connecticut – United States. The equity giant, Macaulay, which made a 50% return on its $2 billion Glencore investment was founded by Macaulay. The company also owns a vast majority of Mettalum Holdings.
#81 Theodore Rachmat
$1.1 billion, 68, Indonesia. Rachmat is the President Commissioner of Adaro Energy, Indonesia’s largest coal producer, and President Commissioner of Adira Finance.
#82 Eric Sprott
$1.1 billion, 67, Oakville – Canada. Once a research-analyst for Merrill Lynch, Forbes claims that Sprott is a “precious metals fanatic Eric Sprott has recently claimed to hold 90% of his assets outside of Sprott Inc. shares, in gold and silver.”
(Image: Eric Sprott, Interview with Capital Metals Trading, Youtube)
#83 Zhang Zhixiang
$1.1 billion, 45, Beijing – China. Zhixiang chairs the privately held Jianlong Group which entered the metals industry by purchasing a floundering steel plant over a decade ago. Since then the group has been named Jianlong Iron and Steel and Zhixiang has become vice chair of the China Metallurgical Construction Association.
#84 Mikhail Fedyaev
$1 billion, 49, Kemerovo – Russia. Originally a mechanic in a car factory, Fedyaev became a partner of Vladimir Gridin’s Siberian Business amd made his fortune when the group bought Azot Kemerovo, a fertilizer producer and European Media Group.
Since partnering with Gridin, Fadyaev has become part owner of SDS-Holding, which produces more than 20 million tonnes of coal a year.
#85 Feng Hailiang
$1 billion, 51, Zhuji – China. His biggest business, copper Producer Zhejiang Hailang, which Feng owns 28% of, went public in 2008.
#86 Liu Canglong
$1 billion, 57, Chengdu – China. Current chairman of Hongda Group, which deals minerals, real estate and finance. The company, according to Forbes employs 18,000.
#87 Roberto Ongpin
$1 billion, 75, Philippines. A graduate from Harvard business school, Ongpin has investments in property, mining and telecommunications. With controlling interest in San Miguel Corporation, Southeast Asia’s largest publicly listed food packaging company.
(Image: Roberto Ongpin, Interview with Strictly Politics, Youtube)
<<< Previous #34 – #40 A batch of Glencore billionaires and an unlikely threesome who together built an Eurasian copper giant
