Those who have dealt with Mikhail Fridman say that he is a simple, affable and close man, far from the image of a gangster who has of him in certain circles. The Russian tycoon, one of the richest and most powerful men in his country and one of the biggest businessmen in the world, is known in Spain because he managed to get hold of the Dia supermarket chain at its time of greatest crisis and not without controversies. It is estimated that his fortune amounts to 16,000 million euros.
Born in the former USSR (Lviv, 1964) in a Jewish family, the oligarch (who has Russian, Ukrainian and Israeli nationality) has demonstrated from a young age to have a voracious nose for business. He studied at the Institute of Steel and Alloys in Moscow and soon began to work on his own and to undertake. When Airbnb still sounded like Chino, he set up something similar: an agency called Courier, which rented apartments to foreigners.
At that time, having a Jewish surname in Russia was a disadvantage that prevented him from accessing the university he was aspiring to, so he chose to study at the Moscow Steel and Alloys Institute. "The only problem was my Jewish origin. So, having a Jewish name in Russia was a huge disadvantage if you wanted to make a career in the Soviet Union," says Fridman.
Fridman was inspired by an American business model to found his supermarket chain: "I remember reading an article about how Sam Walton created Walmart: Products at a low price to get higher sales. His model inspired me and I thought we should do the same. At that time Russia was going through an economically difficult period, "Fridman explains.
He then created Alfa-Eco, a second-hand computer company, and later co-founded with another partner Alfa Bank, which became Russia's largest private bank. Tourism, finance, commerce, oil (it was in the TNK oil company, which allied with British Petroleum), Fridman has gotten his foot in almost all the pots and the truth is that the companies he has created have emerged in their sector. He amassed his fortune in the 1990s and has not only survived the political ups and downs of Russia in recent decades, but has increasingly gained power and money.
Business and jazz
Of all his business incursions he consolidated the capital group that he now chairs: Alfa Group, which has tentacles in the most disparate areas: telecommunications, finance, retail. ... He also owns Letterone, based in Luxembourg and the fund that has the capital in Dia. One of his companies was the one that the Prestige signed. Today Fridman is the seventh richest man in Russia and one of the wealthiest in the world, according to Forbes magazine.
With four children and divorced, he lives in London and a jazz and reading fan confesses, as he confessed in a magazine to Forbes. He is a friend of Vladimir Putin, a friendship that has helped him dispel the shadows that loom over his person. Nor has he been investigated for allegedly helping Donald Trump win the elections in 2016. His dangerous friendships and accusations have so far emerged more or less airy. Partly because of the success it has had at the business level: X5 supermarkets are leaders in Russia and the model of these is what they want to apply for Dia.
The bid he launched to take over the total capital of the supermarkets was interpreted by many of Dia's shareholders as an attempt to seize the chain at a price of laughter, taking advantage of the bad situation the company is going through. It offered 0.67 cents per share to investors (despite the fact that many came to pay almost four euros for each security) ensuring that it was the only possible alternative to avoid the end of the chain.
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