MOSCOW, September 8 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s richest man and Arsenal soccer club shareholder Alisher Usmanov became the first Russian to be named by the Bloomberg Markets magazine among the world’s 50 most influential people.
The magazine placed him among the most influential corporate brokers – next to Amazon.com’s founder Jeff Bezos, Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO Warren Buffet and Yahoo! Inc.’s CEO Marissa Mayer, the publication said Sunday. The winners were not ranked and their names were listed alphabetically.
Usmanov, whose fortune is estimated at $17.6 billion by Forbes Magazine, built up his financial empire through successful investments in iron ore producers, telecommunication companies, and Internet firms like Facebook and Twitter.
A former fencer, Usmanov also finances the development of the sport in Russia, and is president of the International Fencing Association. He also owns 29.11 percent of British soccer club Arsenal.
A native of Uzbekistan, Usmanov served a spell in prison in the then-Soviet republic in the 1980s, but in 2000 was cleared of the charges by Uzbekistan's Supreme Court on grounds that the accusations against him had been false, according to a spokesman.
In April, he topped the Sunday Times Rich List in 2013 with an estimated fortune of 13.3 billion British pounds ($20.3 billion). The list was not limited to British citizens and included individuals and families born overseas but who predominantly reside in Britain.
