Victor Mykhailovych Pinchuk | |
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Pinchuk at the 2010 Time 100 Gala
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Born |
Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union |
14 December 1960
Other names | Віктор Михайлович Пінчук |
Occupation | Businessman and philanthropist |
Known for |
Interpipe Group EastOne Group LLC |
Net worth | US$1.5 billion (January 2017) |
Spouse(s) | Elena Arshava (div.) Olena Kuchma Franchuk |
Children | 4 |
Victor Pinchuk (Ukrainian: Віктор Михáйлович Пінчýк, Viktor Mykhailovych Pinchuk; born 14 December 1960) is a Ukrainian businessman and philanthropist. As of January 2016, Forbes ranked him as 1250th on the list of wealthiest people in the world, with a fortune of US $1.44 billion.
Pinchuk is the founder of EastOne Group LLC, an international investing, project funding and financial advisory company based in London, and of Interpipe Group, one of Ukraine's leading pipe, wheel and steel producers. Pinchuk is the owner of four TV channels and a popular tabloid, Fakty i Kommentarii. He has been a member of the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, for two consecutive terms from 1998 to 2006. He is married to Olena Pinchuk, the daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
Pinchuk was born in 1960 in Kyiv to Jewish parents who moved to the industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk. He graduated from Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute with a doctorate in industrial engineering in 1987. Three years later, he founded the Interpipe Company on the basis of his patented innovations, which were adopted by leading metallurgical factories in the USSR.
Interpipe is a major producer of seamless pipes and railway wheels. In 2004, Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov, two of Ukraine's richest men, acquired the Kryvorizhstal steel factory for about $800 million. Later, the first Tymoshenko Government reversed this sale, and held a nationally-televised repeat auction that netted $4.8 billion. In 2006, Pinchuk founded an investment advisory company, EastOne. Its portfolio includes industrial assets such as production of pipes and tubes, rail car wheels, specialty steels and alloys, machinery, as well as media.
Pinchuk was a member of the Ukrainian Parliament between 1998 and 2006 for Labour Ukraine. He left politics after he came to the conclusion that Ukraine had reached a level of development when business and politics should be separated.