Aven is the co-owner of ABH Holdings, the company through which he holds a 12.4% stake in Moscow-based Alfa Bank, Russia's fifth largest bank. Through Luxembourg-based LetterOne, he also owns minority stakes in European oil and gas producer Wintershall Dea, as well as the international mobile phone company Veon.
Petr Aven's net worth of $5.21B can buy ...
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The majority of Aven's fortune is derived from the proceeds he received from the sale of a 3.4% stake in TNK-BP International. TNK-BP was a joint venture between eight Russian billionaires and London-based energy company BP that was sold to Russian oil business Rosneft in March 2013. The billionaires collected $27.7 billion in the sale, with Aven receiving $1.9 billion, in addition to almost $1.3 billion in dividends from 2004 to 2012, according to data compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The value of his cash investments is calculated in US dollars and includes the effect of taxes and market performance.
Aven owns most of his interests, which include banking, telecommunications and insurance, through a web of companies based in Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands. He's also a partner in Alfa Group, along with Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman, German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev. Through Alfa and ABH Holdings he controls 12.4% of Alfa Bank, Russia's fifth largest bank by assets, according to the Banki.ru ranking. He also has about 13% of asset management firm Alfa Capital and about 14% of Alfa Strakhovanie insurance company, both based in Moscow.
Through Luxembourg-based LetterOne, he and his partners completed the 5.1 billion-euro ($5.8 billion) acquisition of German RWE's Dea unit, which produces oil and gas in Norway, Germany and Egypt. In 2019, Dea merged with Wintershall, BASF's oil and gas unit. Aven owns a 3.3% of the asset, as well as a 12% stake in health-food retail chain Holland & Barrett.
The billionaire also holds a 6.9% stake in Veon, a telecommunications group, and a 2.4% stake in Turkcell.
Aven was sanctioned by the European Union and the UK in 2022 over the escalating conflict in Ukraine.
Petr Aven was born in Moscow, in 1955, to a Soviet computer engineering professor, Oleg Aven. He attended a Moscow school that specialized in physics and mathematics. He graduated with an economics degree from Moscow State University in 1977 and received a doctorate in economics from the school three years later.
Aven moved to Laxenburg, Austria, in 1989, and began working at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, a scientific research entity focused on global policy issues. He returned to Russia in 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed, and began working as a minister of foreign economic relations in the new Russian government. In government, Aven became an ally of Yegor Gaidar, the architect of the country's shock therapy policy, which allowed for the blanket release of price and currency controls, the withdrawal of state subsidies and immediate trade liberalization. The moves drew both praise and criticism after they were administered in post-Soviet Russia.
The billionaire left the government in 1992 and established a consulting company called Petr Aven's Finance a year later. He partnered with Mikhail Fridman, German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev in Alfa Bank, the anchor business of their Alfa Group holding company, which was founded in 1989 and has interests in insurance and retail. Aven became an Alfa Group partner and served as president of Alfa Bank until 2011, when he was named chairman.
Through Luxembourg-based LetterOne Holdings, the billionaire holds minor stakes in VimpelCom, international mobile phone operator, and Turkcell, Turkey's biggest mobile phone company.
Aven lives in Moscow.