| Gennady Nikolayevich Timchenko | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 8, 1952 Leninakan, Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic |
| Nationality | Finnish |
| Known for | CEO of Gunvor |
| Net worth | US$5.5 billion (2011)[1] |
Gennady Nikolayevich Timchenko (also spelled Guennadi Timtchenko; (born 1952) is a prominent businessman, active in the energy trading business, citizen of Finland,[2] currently living in Geneva, Switzerland.
Timchenko is ranked 185th in the 2011 edition of the Forbes magazine billionaires list, with an estimated fortune of $5.5 billion USD.[3]
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Gennady Timchenko was born in Lininakan, Armenia (then south part of the Soviet Union) in 1952 from a father who was in the Soviet military. He spent part of his childhood in the German Democratic Republic and in Ukraine.[4]
According to a 2008 interview with the Wall Street Journal, he graduated from the Mechanical Institute of St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) as an electrical mechanical engineer.[4]
In 1977, he started to work as an engineer for a plant near St. Petersburg specializing in building power generators. Since he spoke German, he was then moved to the trade department of this state-owned company.
In 1987-1994, when Russia started to liberalize its economy, he was promoted as the head of the state-owned oil company Kirshineftekhimexport enterprise. At this period Timchenko’s teams set up some of the first export routes of oil products from the USSR to Western countries. Timchenko became one of the first figures of the Russian oil trading industry.
In 1990, Gennady Timchenko decided to leave Russia and was hired by a Finland-based company, URALS FINLAND, specializing in importing Russian oil to Europe. He settled in Finland and became a Finnish citizen.
Gennady Timchenko is the co-founder (together with Torbjörn Törnqvist) of Gunvor international B.V. a corporation registered in the Netherlands, and operating in trading and logistics related to the international oil market.
Its operations consist in processing different sources of crude oil (there are different kinds) and optimize its supply in accordance to the movements in price and demand, but also by taking into account the variability of these two aspects regarding the political and economic context. Gunvor is well known for owning its own shipping company, Clearlake Shipping Ltd, which accounts, according to company’s officials, for its leadership in the oil trading. According to the German newspaper Capital, Gunvor's annual turnover amounts to 70 billion dollars and the company's profit for 2008 was USD 500 million.
In May 2008, he publicly maintained that his "career of more than 20 years in the oil industry has not been built on favours or political connections".[5]
In 1987–1994 he worked for the state-owned Kirishineftekhimexport enterprise.
In 2008 Timchenko's fortune was estimated by Forbes at $2.5 billion. It has since grown to over $5 billion in 2011.[6]
Gunvor is the third biggest oil trader in the world after Glencore and Vitol.
Gennady Timchenko funded in 2007 and controls the Luxemburg based fund Volga Resources. The purpose of this fund is “to invest in transferable securities as well as in other assets and financial instruments (…) to deliver long term capital appreciation to shareholders”.[7]
In October 2008, Gennady Timchenko announced that Volga Resources bought 5% of the shares of the gas producing company Novatek, for an estimated 500 million US dollars.[8] In May 2009, Volga Resources announced that it has agreed to purchase 13.13% of Novatek and Gennady Timchenko was elected to the Board of Directors of Novatek.[9]
In October 2009, Volga Resources acquired 54.1% of the shares of German insurer Sovag (Schwarzmeer und Ostsee Versicherungs-Aktiengesellschaft).[10]
In 2008, Timchenko and his wife Elena Timchenko created the Geneva based non-profit organization Neva Foundation, in order to promote and finance cultural projects in Switzerland and Russia.[11] The foundation is notably focused on lyrical art and has a partnership with the Geneva Opera House. Renowned St-Petersburg philharmonic conductor Yuri Temirkanov is a trustee of the foundation.[12]