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Roman Abramovich

A £155m divorce settlement was small change for Abramovich, 40, whose split from his second wife Irina (qv) was announced last month. Abramovich, who spends most of his time in Britain, started in Moscow making cheap plastic products. His career took off when he bought the Sibneft oil company with Boris Berezovsky (qv) in 1995 for about £120m. Ten years later Sibneft was sold to Gazprom, earning Abramovich and his partners about £7.5 billion. The vast majority of that went to Abramovich. He has another £1 billion of holdings in other areas of Russian industry including pharmaceuticals. Dividends and sales of stakes in his other operations, such as aluminium holdings, add another £2 billion. Football fan Abramovich, who has spent £500m-plus since acquiring Chelsea in 2003 , can relax on three yachts — and there’s another under construction.