Oleg Deripaska: the man even Putin avoids

Oleg Deripaska is by far the most feared of all Russia's wheeler-dealer plutocrats. But now, the ruthless metals czar faces his own financial meltdown.

It was Peter Mandelson's birthday on Tuesday. The new Business Secretary celebrated in style with a political coup of serpentine brilliance. Having become mired in the controversy around his friendship with Oleg Deripaska, events turned suddenly in his favour when it emerged the Tories were up to their necks in it, too. Yet Deripaska may have other things on his mind, says the Daily Mail: namely his own financial survival.

Deripaska, whose fortune was put at £17bn before the current financial crisis, is "fighting a desperate battle to keep his vast metals, banking and car empire intact". It is a measure of the clobbering he has taken from crashing metal and stock markets that Russia's "aluminium tsar" is now desperately casting around for a mere $2bn. The "clock is ticking" for Deripaska, says the FT. He needs the cash to repay part of a $4.5bn loan from Western banks to fund expansion of his empire. If he can't raise it by the end of the month, he will have to hand creditors a 25% stake in Norilsk, the world's biggest nickel miner. "We're in a bit of a last-chance saloon," says a source close to him. Deripaska is far from alone in his speedy fall from financial grace: the collective wealth of the 25 richest Russian businessmen has plunged by $230bn since May. But many Russians view it as significant that he of all people is now vulnerable. Deripaska is by far the most feared of all Russia's wheeler-dealer plutocrats, says The Sunday Telegraph, and not just because of his close links with the Kremlin. The outwardly folksy charm of this "baby-faced billionaire" belies an often-violent past. As Marshall Goldman, a Russian expert at Harvard University, points out: "Even Putin gives him a wide berth."

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