Search the definitive guide to the richest 1,000 in Britain and Ireland

Eugene Shvidler

He is no ordinary football supporter. Shvidler helped Roman Abramovich (qv) buy his very own Premiership club. Shvidler, 43, is a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas and of Fordham University in America. He spent two years as a member of Deloitte & Touche’s international taxation group in New York before returning to Russia in 1994. Shvidler co-founded the oil trading outfit Runicom in the early 1990s with Abramovich and they took control of Russian oil firm Sibneft in 1995 via the Millhouse Capital operation. In 2005 oil giant Gazprom took over the Millhouse controlling stake for $13.1 billion. Shvidler, the highest new entry in this year’s Rich List, is a close confidant of Abramovich and advised him on the purchase of Chelsea football club (he’s a regular spectator at the club’s Stamford Bridge ground) and the more recent purchase of a 41% stake in Evraz, Russia’s largest steelmaker. Shvidler shares in these investments and last year Abramovich gave him one of his yachts, Le Grand Bleu, which came complete with 65-man crew, helicopter, aquarium and speedboat as thanks for his role in the acquisition of Chelsea. Other Shvidler investments include a Russian meat processor and Moscow real estate. Shvidler is based in London in a desirable part of Belgravia, where his house has an underground swimming pool. He is reckoned to be worth £1.286 billion by Forbes in its 2007 list of world billionaires.