Net Worth: $306 million

Age: 43

Marital status: Married, two sons and two daughters

Last year: $1.1 billion

Industry: Food industry, mass media, automobile industry

While Petro Poroshenko’s automobile business isn’t going too well at the moment (he owns the Cherkassy-based automobile company Bohdan), his confectionary business is getting on sweetly. In the last year his company Roshen increased production by 10,000 tons. In 2009, Roshen, one of the largest Ukrainian confectionary producers, is flying in the face of the crisis by announcing intentions to build a factory in Lipetsk by 2012. The Ukrainian entrepreneur already has a factory that produces caramel, Likonf, in this Russian town, as well as  another one in Klaiped in Latvia and four in Ukraine. Now Poroshenko has picked up 40 hectares of land in Lipetsk. The cost of the project is up to $150 million, and the factory has a projected production capacity of 15,000 tons of confectionary per year. But if Poroshenko doesn’t intend to delay his entrance on the Russian market until better times, then in Ukraine he is being very careful with investments. The company acquired a land plot of 10 hectares in Vinnitsa some time ago. But in current conditions Poroshenko believes it unwise to build a factory in Ukraine.