German Khan

His Alfa Group, which he shares with fellow billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Alexei Kuzmichev, is the biggest financial and industrial group in Russia. Khan is executive director of TNK-BP, the group's oil business. In February Russian shareholders of TNK-BP won a London court injunction pending arbitration against the shares exchange deal between BP and state-owned Rosneft; TNK-BP management followed in March with an offer to buying a $7.6 billion stake in BP in a bid to join an offshore partnership with Rosneft. Kiev native came to Moscow to study. With college buddies Fridman and Kuzmichev, started commodities trading outfit, Alfa-Eco, in 1989; two years later they launched the Alfa-Bank, which is now the biggest private bank by capital in Russia. Bought Tyumen Oil from the state in the late 1990s and merged it with BP's Russian assets into TNK-BP. The group also has stakes in two Russian cellular companies and owns the biggest retailer, X5.