Viktor Vekselberg celebrated his 50th birthday earlier this month as Russia’s ninth-richest man with a fortune estimated at $10.4 billion (£5.2 billion).

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, he had spent his career as a laboratory researcher in a state engineering company.

Soon afterwards he engineered Russia’s first successful hostile takeover, taking charge of the Vladimir Tractor Factory. He moved into aluminium plants and bauxite mines, creating a $1 billion company, Sual Holding.

However, his career as an oligarch really took off when he joined forces with Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group to take control of the Tyumen Oil Company. The pair earned $6.75 billion in cash and shares when they merged the company with BP in 2003 in a $14 billion joint venture that was the largest deal in Russia at that time.

Mr Vekselberg now owns 22 per cent of the world’s largest aluminium producer after the merger this year of Sual’s assets with Glencore and Rusal, which is owned by his fellow Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

Mr Vekselberg has sought to stay on the right side of the Kremlin by spending some of his vast fortune on bringing important cultural artefacts back to Russia. In 2004, he spent an estimated $90 million (£45 million) to buy nine Fabergé eggs from the Forbes family, saying that he was returning one of Russia’s “most revered treasures”.

Last September, he spent $1 million to return the Lowell House Bells from Harvard University to their original home at the Danilov Monastery in Moscow.

Mr Vekselberg also promised to pay for 17 replacement bells at Harvard.

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