Leonid Mikhelson and his family are ranked No. 88 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, tied with Emmanuel Besnier, with a net worth of $28.3 billion. He is the chief executive, chairman and a major shareholder of the Russian gas company Novatek.
Leonid Viktorovich Mikhelson was born on August 11, 1955, to an Ashkenazi Jewish father and a Russian mother. He is a Russian-Israeli businessman. He graduated in industrial civil engineering from the Samara Institute of Civil Engineering in 1977.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 88 (tied with Emmanuel Besnier), with $28.3 billion, listed as “Leonid Mikhelson & family”; Wikipedia says this made him fourth in Russia
- Bloomberg: on August 24, 2026, its index put him at $24.8 billion, 103rd in the world and second in Russia
Career
He began as a foreman at a construction company in the Tyumen area of Siberia, where one of his first projects was the Urengoi–Chelyabinsk gas pipeline. In 1985 he became chief engineer of Ryazantruboprovodstroy, and in 1987 general director of Kuibyshevtruboprovodstroy, which in 1991 was one of the first companies privatised after the Soviet collapse.
- 1994: he became general director of the holding company Novafinivest, later known as NOVATEK
- Novatek and Sibur: he holds about 25% of Novatek and 57.5% of Sibur, the gas processing and petrochemicals company, of which he is chairman
- Partner: he often partners with Gennady Timchenko, whom Wikipedia describes as a close confidant of Vladimir Putin; they are majority shareholders in both Novatek and Sibur, and in 2013 they sold 12% of Sibur to management partners
Sanctions and Arctic LNG
Forbes reported that US sanctions on the Arctic LNG project affected Novatek, and that the project halted production in October 2024. He has a megayacht named Pacific.
Art
Mikhelson has a strong interest in art, and says that 99% of his interest is in Russian art.
Why It Matters
Novatek is one of Russia’s largest private natural gas producers, and Mikhelson’s wealth is tied to Russia’s gas exports and to the sanctions that affect them.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: Vladimir Putin (centre) with Leonid Mikhelson (blue tie) and Sibur CEO Dmitry Konov (right), December 1, 2020. Photo: Presidential Press and Information Office / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
