You're reading: #11 Richest: Andriy Verevsky, 36

$947 million Married with two sons and one daughter Interests: agribusiness, vegetable oils

Poltava native Andriy Verevsky must be doing something right: He’s always managed to secure rights for grain export quotas, regardless of who’s in power.

By some miracle, Verevsky in 2007 was granted a higher quota than any other market player in sunflower seeds.

He was a parliamentary deputy belonging to the Yulia Tymoshenko faction at the time.

When the political winds blew in a different direction this June, Verevsky switched allegiance to the Party of Region’s faction loyal to President Viktor Yanukovych.

And again, when the government set export quotas for grain in November, Kernel was one of 14 companies that secured the lion’s share of quotas, receiving 21 percent.

Kernel today is one of the largest sunflower seed oil producers in Ukraine, with a 35 percent share of the domestic bottled oil market. It ranks among Ukraine’s top-five grain exporters.

And despite getting hit for three years straight by the effects of the global financial meltdown, Verevsky’s business group has only become stronger.

This year, Kernel Group acquired one of the biggest sunflower oil exporters, Allseeds, boosting its annual seed crushing capacity by 565,000 tons and grain storage capacity by 600,000, as well as acquiring an oil shipment terminal in Mykolayiv.