German Khan

German Borisovich Khan (Герман Борисович Хан; born 24 October 1961) is a Ukrainian-Russian oligarch, billionaire, and businessman. After graduating from university in 1988 he worked in a wholesale business selling consumer items, before setting up his own cooperative. He was then appointed the head of the wholesale trade business Alfa Eco as part of the Alfa Group Consortium, by his college friend Mikhail Fridman. Alfa Group, which he also shares with another fellow billionaire and college peer, Alexei Kuzmichev, is the biggest financial and industrial investment group in Russia. He became president of Alfa Eco in 1996 and was instrumental in directing the company to focus on export and the oil trade. When Alfa bought Tyumen Oil (TNK) in 1997, he joined the board of directors. He was deputy chairman of TNK Oil Company from 1997 until 2003. In 2003, Khan worked with the other TNK owners to form a 50–50 joint venture with British Petroleum (BP), in what was the largest foreign investment in Russia to date, at US$8 billion. TNK-BP became Russia's third largest oil company. In 2013 TNK-BP was sold to Rosneft for US$56 billion, a sale described by Reuters as "one of the biggest energy takeovers in history." Khan joined Mikhail Fridman in establishing LetterOne, based in Luxembourg, for the purpose of investing some of the proceeds from the TNK-BP sale in international projects. LetterOne's L1 Energy fund was founded in 2013. Khan has donated funds to non-profits such as the European Jewish Fund, and co-founded and supports the Genesis Philanthropy Group. German Borisovich Khan was born on 24 October 1961 in Kyiv, Ukraine. The son of Ukrainian Jewish parents from Lviv, his father was a metallurgy professor. Khan had a keen interest in sports at a young age, and during high school he developed a long-term interest in boxing, citing the sport as an influence on building confidence and self-discipline. Khan graduated from high school in 1978 and subsequently worked for a year as an apprentice on a shop floor of a factory.