I’ll leave this here, if only for the record: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF OLIGARCHS USA Johns Hopkins (1795–1873) — one of the richest men of the 19th century, a merchant and railroad co-owner — founded Johns Hopkins University (ranked 16th among universities) and Johns Hopkins Hospital. John Rockefeller (1839–1937) — head of Standard Oil, the richest man in history — founded the University of Chicago (10th in global university rankings) in 1889. He also founded Rockefeller University and the Rockefeller Foundation. Andrew Carnegie — founder of Carnegie Steel Company, the second-richest man in the United States after John Rockefeller — donated money to establish more than 2,500 libraries around the world. He founded the Carnegie Foundation and Carnegie Mellon University. Anthony Drexel (1826–1893) — American banker and partner of J.P. Morgan — founded Drexel University. Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877) founded Vanderbilt University. Andrew Mellon (1855–1937) — banker, businessman, and the third-largest taxpayer in the United States in the 1920s after the Rockefellers and Ford — donated $43 million to the University of Pittsburgh (in 1920s dollars). He founded the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research. Will Kellogg (1860–1951) — billionaire and producer of Kellogg’s cereals — founded California State Polytechnic University and the Kellogg Foundation. Howard Hughes (1905–1976) — aviator, inventor, billionaire (Hughes Aircraft and Hughes Aerospace) — founded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1953. The institute’s endowment currently stands at about $16 billion. Michael Bloomberg — the current mayor of New York, billionaire, and owner of the Bloomberg financial news agency — donated $300 million to Johns Hopkins University. Bill Gates — head of Microsoft, billionaire — founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is the world’s largest private charitable foundation, with an endowment of $36 billion. In particular, the foundation spent $1.5 billion on scholarships for talented students from ethnic minorities and $250 million on school development in the United States. Warren Buffett — billionaire, investment guru, head of Berkshire Hathaway, and the richest man in the world in 2008 — bequeathed 83% of his fortune (about $30 billion) to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Incidentally: Princeton was founded thanks to four wealthy landowners — John Stockton, Thomas Leonard, John Hornor, and Nathaniel FitzRandolph — who provided the university with land and money. Harvard was founded by the state of Massachusetts and named after John Harvard, who bequeathed his library and money for its upkeep. Yale was named after Elihu Yale, a Boston native and governor of Madras, who donated books and valuables to the university. Russia Roman Abramovich, billionaire, businessman, bought Chelsea Football Club. Alisher Usmanov, billionaire, businessman, bought Arsenal Football Club. Suleiman Kerimov, billionaire, businessman, bought Anzhi Football Club. Leonid Fedun, billionaire, co-owner of Lukoil, bought Spartak Football Club. Oleg Deripaska, billionaire, owner of Rusal, bought Kuban Football Club. Anton Zingarevich, son of Boris Zingarevich, a billionaire businessman and owner of Ilim Pulp, bought Reading Football Club. Maksim Demin, billionaire, chairman of the board of National Insurance Group, bought Bournemouth Football Club. Dmitry Rybolovlev, billionaire, former owner of Uralkali, bought AS Monaco. Vladimir Antonov, billionaire, banker, bought Portsmouth Football Club. Gazprom bought Zenit Football Club. Gazprom’s investment in Zenit is estimated at $150 million. Gazprom also sponsors Germany’s Schalke, Serbia’s Red Star Belgrade (Crvena zvezda), Russia’s Sakhalin, and is a partner of the UEFA Champions League. Among this whole crowd of football fanatics, there is one exception. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, billionaire, owner of Yukos, sponsored the Russian State University for the Humanities and founded the Open Society Foundation. At present, Khodorkovsky is in prison. http://www.novayagazeta.ru/columns/56114.html Fairness requires saying that I was able to recall two “educational projects” financed by our oligarchs: “Potanin scholarships and grants.” About $10 million a year, judging by the reports on the website. “The Skolkovo School of Management.
The entire oligarchic gang opened the project with great pomp, and Medvedev even served as its chief patron.
What I remember about this project is that I had a long-running fight with Sberbank over an obviously unfavorable loan issued to Skolkovo.
In the end, Sberbank restructured the loan through another bank.
As we know, this whole “Skolkovo School of Management” has now quietly collapsed. For some reason, the miracle-working abilities of our oligarchs don’t function where there are no loans-for-shares auctions and similar little arrangements.
For some reason, nobody wanted to come to Russia and pay €90,000 a year to absorb the business wisdom of Mordashov and Chubais (what a surprise!).
Otherwise, yes, these guys specialize in investing in projects as far removed as possible from the points of sucking money out of the ground making a profit. And they really love football.