Famous for
In 2022, he became the largest shareholder of Alfa-Bank (41% of shares), after his business partners were placed under sanctions and transferred their stakes in the bank to Kosogov.
Assets
Alfa-Bank is Russia’s largest private bank. At the beginning of 2024, Kosogov owned 41% of the shares. The bank’s assets as of 2023 total 6.2 trillion rubles (about $74.69 billion). It is part of the Alfa Group consortium.
Through the investment holding LetterOne (in which Kosogov holds a 47.2% stake as of 2023), together with his Alfa-Bank business partners, he owns various assets with a total value of $18.654 billion (nearly 1.250 trillion rubles) as of 2022, including:
- German oil and gas company Wintershall Dea (33% stake);
- Turkey’s largest telecom operator Turkcell (19.8% stake);
- Telecommunications holding company VEON (56.2% stake);
- Holland & Barrett, a British chain of health food stores;
- Parexel, an American pharmaceutical company;
- BakeMark, a leading American bakery products company.
Through Alfa Group’s organizations and together with the same partners, he holds stakes in:
- AlfaStrakhovanie, an insurance company;
- Alfa Asset Management, an investment and management company;
- X5 Retail Group, one of Russia’s leading retailers;
- Rosvodokanal, one of Russia’s largest private water and wastewater companies;
- IDS Borjomi International, the leading bottled water company in Russia.
Interests and hobbies
- Kosogov is fond of sport fishing in the remote corners of the Russian North.
- The entrepreneur also enjoys bodybuilding and ice hockey.
Professional history
Andrei Kosogov was born on 15 March 1961 in Sillamäe, Estonian SSR.
After finishing school he served in the Soviet Army.
In 1987 he graduated with honours from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute (MPEI) and enrolled in postgraduate studies.
At the same time, he was elected head of the communist society at the MPEI, on the basis of which he founded a student union two years later. He assembled teams of students within the organization to work on various commercial projects.
After his postgraduate studies, he worked as a regular engineer at the MPEI. In 1990, he became commercial director of the Centre for Automation of Thermophysical Research, a company set up at the university to distribute Hewlett-Packard equipment.
In 1992, Kosogov answered a newspaper advertisement for a job at Alfa Group. The entrepreneur became a member of the board of directors, reporting directly to the company’s founder, Mikhail Fridman.
The privatization of state assets in Russia began at the same time. Kosogov founded the Alfa Capital cheque fund and an investment company of the same name. Under Kosogov’s leadership, the organizations bought and sold shares in various companies.
In 1996, Kosogov became the head of the Alfa Capital management company.
According to Bloomberg, in the same year Kosogov received an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in the United States.
In 1998, Andrei Kosogov became a co-owner of Alfa-Bank, leading the company’s overall investment strategy and becoming its first vice president.
He went on to make a number of successful deals:
- An investment in the STS TV channel in 1998;
- The sale of the music channel Muz-TV in 2002;
- The purchase of shares in Ukrainian telecom operator KyivStar GSM in 2002–2004;
- The sale of the pharmaceutical company Akrikhin in 2005.
Since 2001, Alfa Group has been consolidating various telecom assets: VimpelCom (with the Beeline brand), Kyivstar, Golden Telecom and MegaFon.
In 2004, these companies were merged into Alfa Telecom, later renamed Altimo. Andrei was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company.
In 2003, Kosogov headed the board of directors of the insurance company AlfaStrakhovanie. In 2007, he was succeeded by Petr Aven, his business partner in Alfa Group.
In 2006, Kosogov became head of Alfa Capital Management and Alfa Capital Partners, a private equity firm that merged with Alfa Asset Management.
At the same time, Kosogov became chairman of the supervisory board of Alfa-Bank’s Ukrainian unit, which later became Sense Bank. Ukraine nationalized it in 2023.
In 2013, Alfa-Bank acquired 55% of bottled water producer IDS Borjomi International. Kosogov oversaw the deal and subsequent project management. After sanctions were imposed on Alfa-Bank’s main shareholders in 2022 to reduce their stake to 49.9%, some of Borjomi’s shares were donated to the Georgian government.
In 2013, together with Alfa Group business partners, he created the investment holding company LetterOne. The joint investments totalled $15.36 billion (about 491 billion rubles). The partners received the money for the investment from the sale of the oil company TNK-BP.
In 2022, following the imposition of sanctions by the European Union and the United States against Kosogov’s partners in Alfa Group, he left all positions in LetterOne along with his partners.
At the same time, the partners redistributed their shares in Alfa-Bank. Kosogov, who was not under sanctions and previously held 3.67% of the shares, received 41% of the company. German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichev’s shares were included in the package.
He has been under Ukrainian sanctions since 2023.
Deals and ventures
- In 1997, Alfa-Bank, together with Leonard Blavatnik’s Access and Viktor Vekselberg’s Renova, acquired a 40% stake in Tyumen Oil Company (TNK).
- In 2003, British Petroleum (BP) bought 50% of the company for $6.75 billion (about 202.5 million rubles).
- In 2013, the Russian state company Rosneft bought 100% of the merged TNK-BP. The share belonging to Alfa-Bank’s co-owners was about 25%. Kosogov earned $570 million (about 17.67 billion rubles) from the deal.
- Between 1998 and 2003, Alfa Group divisions spent $56.5 million (about 1.695 billion rubles) on the purchase of a 29.1% stake in STS Media Holding. In 2011, the consortium sold its stake for $1.07 billion (about 31 billion rubles). The buyer was Telcrest, a company linked to the National Media Group and the Itera gas holding.
- In 2000, Alfa-Bank invested $18 million (about 504 million rubles) in the purchase of Muz-TV. Two years later, the company was sold for $25 million (about 775 million rubles).
- In 2001, Alfa Group bought a blocking stake of 25% plus one share in VimpelCom (later VEON), one of Russia’s largest telecom operators, and an impressive stake in its regional subsidiary for nearly $247 million (about 7.163 billion rubles).
- In 2005 Alfa-Bank, led by Kosogov, sold an 80.36% stake in pharmaceutical company Akrikhin for $40 million (about 1.12 billion rubles).
- In 2014, Alfa Group acquired one of Germany’s largest oil and gas companies, RWE Dea, for €5.1 billion (about 255 billion rubles).
- In 2019, the company merged with BASF’s Wintershall. The combined company became Europe’s largest oil and gas company.
Achievements
- Since 2009, he has been included in the top 100 of Forbes’ annual ranking of Russia’s richest businesspeople.
- In 2018, he was nominated as an Industry Legend at the SPEAR’S Russia Wealth Management Awards.
Criticism and disputes
- In 2023, Ukraine seized corporate assets belonging to Kosogov and his associates totalling $464 million (about 39.44 billion rubles). The assets seized include financial, insurance, telecommunications and IT companies.
- In 2024, Kosogov and his partners filed a claim against Ukraine for $1 billion (about 92 billion rubles) at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The case concerns the nationalization of Sense Bank (formerly Alfa-Bank Ukraine).
Attitudes to Russian–Ukrainian conflict
He has not made any public statements.
Kosogov has a brother, Yuri, who lives in Ukraine. He is a co-founder of the Transfert securities house, and was listed among the co-owners and beneficiaries of the Ukrainian state lottery operator MSL as well as among the members of the supervisory board of the Providna Insurance Company.
Community work
- Kosogov was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Timrot Thermophysics charitable foundation. The organization’s goals include the support and development of scientific research in experimental and theoretical thermophysics, improvement of the educational process, social support and enriching the cultural lives of MPEI students and employees.
- In 2004, Alfa-Bank launched the Life Line programme for seriously ill children, which later became the charitable foundation of the same name, one of the largest in Russia. In its first 10 years alone, the organization raised 1.4 billion rubles and helped 7,000 people.
Additional information
Married with three kids.
Source for information: Forbes.com, Forbes.ru, Kommersant.ru, Tadviser.ru, Rbc.ru, Banki.ru
