Mikhail Prokorov Has Brass Balls
There aren’t many bulls running around in this bear market, mainly because everyone is hoarding cash and no one seems to know what (if anything) everything is worth anymore. One of our favourites though is Mikhail Prokhorov. Either shrewdly or seredipitously, he dodged a bullet by selling a large stake in Norilsk Nickel, the company that made him the 24th richest person in the world in the first place, just before the nickel price slump of the last few months. What he sold for $13bn in April is now only worth $3.38bn.
Now he’s taking advantage of all his lovely cash by making deals that no-one else could possibly make, like buying half of Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital for $500 million, a bargain considering that stake was worth $2bn last year. “Are you criticizing me for feasting amid the Black Death?”, he told reporters when the deal went through a fortnight ago, perhaps also arching a single eyebrow and letting out a confident guffaw.
He’s an interesting character – unmarried, handsome, loves hydrogen technology, and has begun a magazine and social networking site called Snob for Russia’s new financial elite (sample wall post: “OMG u murked Potanin wi da Norilsk deal!!!! BRRRAP”). He was arrested briefly last year for having Russian whores back to his French ski pad, but as he and his chums had been paying them in Gucci bags from the gift shop, he said they were all just good friends, and the charges slipped right off. Smooth work.
But behind the brute poetic soundbites and cash-spunking largesse, he’s covering his back too – in exchange for another bit of Norilsk, he’s getting a third of Polyus, which mines everyone’s favourite stable commodity in times of financial madness – gold. Oh, and he got another $6.5bn in cash on top.
Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | October 12, 2008 8:25PM |
