Net Worth: $3.2 billion (June 2008)

Age: 69 years old

Marital status: Married, has a daughter

Last year: $2.4 billion

Industry: Metallurgy, agricultural business

Vladimir Boyko began building capitalism. To optimize the competitiveness of Illych Mariupol Metallurgical Complex (MMC), a few thousand employees will be discharged in the near future. This is a compulsory measure, but for Boyko - the socialist, it goes against his Marxist belief. Boyko built his entire political and business career on the basis of Marxism-Leninism ideas. The portrait of the leader of the Great Bolshevik revolution still hangs in his office. Illych MMC provided cheap kindergartens, inexpensive vouchers to a factory sanatorium and offered other optional fiscal benefits. Alexander Moroz, Boyko’s party leader, after visiting the enterprise labeled it as an “example of socialism” and “socialistic paradise”.

“Illych factory workers repaired roads, bridges, helped law enforcement structures, hospitals, schools, supported kindergartens. It is time to bring this work to a reasonable expedience and partly decrease the size of the support provided”, said Boyko in February of 2008. “Such are the realities of today”.

The businessman sets the agricultural complex that belongs to the integrated factory and a sewing factory Fairy into a running voyage. By getting rid of unprofitable assets, the MMC general manager increases the market value of his integrated factory. Is it a presale preparation? “The factory is not for sale”, Boyko said. “The issues of a merger may be and are being discussed”.