The Georgian billionaire, who was on the Forbes list with assets of $ 6.5 billion, Ivanishvili Bidzina is known to the world for his short-term political activity as the prime minister of Georgia. Until 2011, until Bidzina Grigorievich announced his participation in the parliamentary elections, he was secretive and famous only in business circles. He began to earn his fortune from the acquisition of state-owned enterprises during the privatization of the Soviet legacy in late 1990. He is married and has four children.
Biography
It is difficult to find information about the personal life and development of the business empire of this influential person. But, nevertheless, there is a brief information from his biography. Ivanishvili Bidzina, whose date of birth is February 18, 1956, from the Sachkher region of Georgia, from the village of Chorvila. It was there that the future philanthropist and entrepreneur Bidzina was born. Father was a miner. Seeing his poor future in his native village, after graduation, an ambitious young man successfully entered Tbilisi State University at the Faculty of Economics. As a student, the guy worked as a cleaner, and later as a grinder at a foundry.
In 1980, he received a diploma with honors from a higher educational institution. This helped him to grow in the post at the plant to a senior engineer, and later to the head of the laboratory. Since 1982, Ivanishvili moved to Moscow to study at the graduate school of the Research Institute of Labor and Social Issues. Four years later, having successfully defended his work, he became a candidate of economic sciences.
The first business trials
Having achieved significant results in science in Moscow, Ivanishvili Bidzina, whose biography records a repeated change of residence between Russia, Georgia, and later France, returned to Tbilisi. He got a job as a senior researcher at a branch of the Research Institute of Labor, and lived in a dormitory at the Foundry and Mechanical Plant.
But the hopeless existence of a researcher spurred the young man to begin to engage in profitable activities. Bidzina organized a cooperative. After analyzing the scarce goods, he realized that reinforced hoses would be in demand. The communications at the foundry helped Ivanashvili rent a room there and set up production. However, circumstances unknown to the general public prevented the novice entrepreneur from bringing the matter to the release of finished products.
But the idea was born to sell computers. The suppliers were Georgian Jews who had settled abroad. After the first millionth transaction, the procurator became interested in his activities, who arrested Ivanishvili Bidzin’s account. His Georgian businessman went to earn his fortune in Moscow.
Start-up capital
Returning to the capital, Ivanishvili immediately visited his graduate student friend Vitaly Malkin, who at that time worked with his friends A. Bryantsev and S. Mosin in the cooperative "Agroprogress", which was engaged in the construction of greenhouses. Bidzina proposed the idea of selling electronic equipment. The business started: people were taking apart tape recorders, computers, and later button phones from a Chinese factory owned by graduate students of the research institute.
By 1990, partners Vitaly Malkin and Ivanishvili Bidzina became co-founders of AgroProgress. They were leaders in the sale of electronic equipment at that time in Moscow. The cooperative had contracts for $ 11 million.
In parallel with entrepreneurial activity, Bidzin from 1998 to 1990 worked in the Federation of Non-Professional Filmmakers as Deputy Head of the Commercial Information Department.
Banking
Being a prudent and far-sighted person, in 1990, having start-up capital, Bidzina decided to establish a bank. Together with partners Mosin and Malkin, they registered the financial institution “Credit Russia”. The bank's shares were distributed as follows: 33% belonged to V. Malkin and 67% - B. Ivanishvili with a share purchased from S. Mosin.
The position of either the president or the deputy chairman of the board in the new business went to the Georgian entrepreneur. It is only known for sure that from 1994 to this day he is listed in his financial brainchild as the first vice president.
By the end of 1990, the bank received a license allowing operations in foreign currency. The partners got a wonderful tandem. Ivanishvili Bidzina managed the “Russian Credit”, and diplomatic Vitaly Borisovich was engaged in relations with the outside world. In 1993, partners established Impexbank.
The entrepreneur also took care of staff training and education. financial literacy. He opened a specialized college, where he taught some disciplines.
Brother for brother
For Bidzin Ivanishvili, the family, and especially her safety, did not fade into the background. The successes in the business of the founders of Russian Credit were so great that they could not help attracting the attention of bandit groups in the early 1990s.
In 1993, Ivanishvili learned about the abduction of his brother in Georgia and that criminals are demanding a ransom for his freedom. The businessman acted judiciously, he did not agree to the terms advanced by the bandits, because he understood that such blackmail could be used in relation to his other relatives. Everything worked out, it was possible to find a brother, and Vladimir Rushailo, the head of the RUBOP of Moscow, helped in this. For such an operation, the reward for the regional department for combating organized crime was the organization of a charity fund, donations to which were made by Russian Credit and other financial institutions.
Relocation to France
In 1994, Ivanishvili Bidzina resigned as president of the bank in favor of V. Malkinay and moved to the position of vice president of the charity fund. In the same period, he left Russia with his family, first moving to America, and later to France. Not far from Paris, an entrepreneur acquired real estate.
Another interesting point related to this country is captured in the biography of Ivanishvili Bidzin. The entrepreneur’s wife, Ekaterina Khvedelidze, who gave birth to four children and still lives with him, was for some time not the only woman. In France, Bidzina married Inga Pavlova a month after the wedding with nineteen-year-old Catherine in Georgia. Their marriage did not last long, and already in 1994, just at the time when the businessman was in Paris, they divorced. Moreover, in an interview, Inga said that she was not present at the divorce, and the procedure took place without her notice.
Non-core assets
In 1995, Bidzina returned to his Moscow business and took over as vice president of Roskredit. Now Ivanishvili has chosen a new strategy - the acquisition of waste enterprises, which a few years later made him a billionaire. Large mining plants - Lebedinsky, Mikhailovsky, Stoilensky - became the property of the bank. Among the assets of Roskredit, 30% of the shares of the Krasnoyarsk metallurgical plant were listed.
To service industrial enterprises, Bidzina created bridge banks: Rosexportbank, Impexbank, Roslegprombank. The financial institution "Roskredit" flourished, and in 1996 in terms of net assets ranked seventh in the country.
Political career
The beginning of 2011 was marked in Georgia by the fact that Bidzina Grigoryevich Ivanishvili announced the creation of an opposition political party Saakashvili and his intention to sell all his Russian assets. A few days later, the activist was deprived of Georgian citizenship, justifying this with the presence of French citizenship.By December of that year, the Georgian Dream movement, led by Ivanishvili, appeared. As the politician promised, by the fall of 2012, he had sold his last asset. It was the agro-industrial corporation Stoilenskaya Niva.
Bidzin's popularity was overwhelming. Provocative statements in his direction immediately began: first, Ivanishvili was accused of helping Chechen fighters, and then fined for bribing voters. Nevertheless, he achieved his goal, and by the fall of 2012 he became prime minister. Ivanishvili advocated integration with Europe, support for Russian-Georgian relations, and partnership with the United States.
Taking the prime minister’s chair, Bidzina warned the people that, having established the state system, he would leave the post a year and a half later, but this had happened a little earlier. On November 20 of the year following the election, he resigned from politics.
Native Chorvila
Not a single well-groomed house and a deprived resident is in the village of Chorvila, which is located in the Sachkher region of Georgia. All because he does not forget about his native village Bidzina Ivanishvili. The photo of this prosperous place amid nearby settlements is impressive. There are good roads in Chorvil, a beautiful House of Culture, a Wedding Palace, a campus, all residential buildings are renovated. Needy families are provided with everything necessary for comfortable housing, even household appliances. Newlyweds receive a gift in the amount of three thousand dollars. Surprisingly, the fact of paying utility bills of Bidzina villagers for seven years.
Those who have visited this famous Georgian place say that it looks like a Swiss one. But the "patronage of the house" lasted until Ivanishvili was elected to the post of prime minister.
Interesting Facts
In addition to real estate in France, Russia and Georgia, Ivanishvili owns a business center worth about $ 50 million, which is located on Mount Tabori. Its construction lasted 10 years, and the project was developed by Japanese architect Sina Takamatsu.
Often called Boris. It went from student years. When the Georgian young man first arrived in Moscow, one of the teachers named the graduate student Bidzin that name, so Ivanishvili remained Boris for the Russians.
Among hobbies, the philanthropist and billionaire prefers chess, backgammon and singing. The entrepreneur also has a collection of paintings by famous authors.
