Mikhail Maratovich Fridman, a Russian-Israeli oligarch, was born on April 21, 1964, in Lviv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine), to Ukrainian parents who still reside there, which he has described as his favorite city. He lived in western Ukraine until age 17 before moving to Moscow, where he attended the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys, graduating in 1986 with a degree in metallurgy and qualifying as an engineer after two unsuccessful attempts to enter university post-high school. In 1989, Fridman co-founded Alfa Group, a multinational conglomerate that expanded into banking (Alfa Bank), oil and gas (TNK-BP), telecommunications (Golden Telecom), and retail (X5 Group), becoming one of Russia's largest private enterprises under his leadership. Forbes ranked him as Russia's second-richest person in 2013 and ninth in 2023, with a net worth of $13.1 billion as of February 2024 per Bloomberg; in 2017, bne IntelliNews named him Russia's most important businessman. Along with partners, he later formed LetterOne Holdings for international investments after divesting Russian oil assets. He is also a co-founder of the Genesis Philanthropy Group.