William Browder
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- See also William Browder (mathematician)
William Browder is the CEO and co-founder of the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management.
Founded in 1996 by Browder and Edmond Safra and investing mainly in Russia, his fund is a prominent activist shareholder in the Russian gas giant Gazprom, the large oil company Surgutneftegaz, Unified Energy Systems and Sberbank. Browder repeatedly and prominently exposed management corruption and corporate malfeasance in these partly state-owned companies.[1]
Prior to starting Hermitage, Browder worked in the Eastern European practice of the Boston Consulting Group in London and managed the Russian proprietary investments desk at Salomon Brothers. He has a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Stanford Business School. There he was classmates with Gary Kremen and Ryland Kelley. [[2]
Although Browder is a vocal supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin, in 2006 he was blacklisted by the Russian government as a "threat to national security" and denied entry to the country. The Economist has accused the Russian government that this blacklisting occurred because he interfered with the flow of money to "corrupt bureaucrats and their businessmen accomplices".[3]
He is the grandson of Earl Browder, the former leader of the Communist Party, USA.
[edit] References
- ^ "Gazprom and Hermitage Capital: Shareholder Activism in Russia", Stanford Graduate School of Business Case IB-36, 2002
- ^ According to his biography on the Hermitage web page
- ^ "An enemy of the people: The sad fate of a loyal Putinista", The Economist, March 25, 2006, p. 80
