Russia’s richest men have lost an estimated $230 billion as stock markets around the world have gone into meltdown.

The country’s elite, including Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club, have lost billions in the financial crisis. Bloomberg, the financial news service, estimated yesterday that Mr Abramovich had lost more than $20 billion (£11.7 billion). Other big losers include Oleg Deripaska, who has been described as Russia’s richest man with, at one point, a fortune of $28 billion.

The sudden reduction in the wealth of the oligarchs could have an impact on London, which has become a home away from home for many of the billionaires. A large number, including Mr Deripaska and Mr Abramovich, have multimillion-pound properties in London and the surrounding counties. Analysts familiar with Russia’s leading businessmen believe that they will hold on to these as a way of keeping wealth outside of the Kremlin’s control. However, estate agents in Chelsea and Kensington are unlikely to see many Russian buyers in the coming months.

Mr Abramovich has seen the value of his investment in Evraz, a steel producer, fall dramatically amid fears of a global recession.

Mr Abramovich owns 40 per cent of Evraz, which is partially listed in London, and the company’s share price has fallen from a high of $131 this year to $14. This has effectively wiped $20 billion off the value of Mr Abramovich’s holding. This paper loss will become actual only if the oligarch is forced to sell his shares.

Russia’s stock market has been particularly badly hit because of its exposure to large resource companies such as Evraz. It has fallen 61 per cent since hitting a peak in May. As the global economy slows, there will be less demand for raw materials such as steel, aluminium, oil and gas, and companies in these sectors have seen their share prices collapse.

“They should take us all off the Forbes list [of billionaires],” said Alexander Lebedev this week. Mr Lebedev owns 30 per cent of Aeroflot, the Russian airline. In his Moscow office yesterday Mr Lebedev, who has lost around half his estimated $3.1billion wealth in the stockmarket plunge, said the financial pinch may bring some sanity to the lives of the oligarchs. “The bell has started to ring,” the man ranked by Forbes as the world’s 358th richest said.

“I can only pin my hopes that what the people call a crisis will be a cold shower for a lot of hotheads in the Forbes list here.

“If someone isn’t able to buy a Bentley, or if some government bureaucrat has to sell his Gulfstream jet for $50 million of his hardworking money . . . that’s a good thing.”

Nikolai Uskov, editor-in-chief of GQ magazine’s Russian language edition, said the oligarchs would find it difficult to stop spending. “If you want to buy new watches and you have the money, you’ll keep buying them. I think they won’t care about another $10,000 or $20,000 even during a crisis time.”

The full scale of Mr Deripaska’s problems emerged this week as creditors began to call in loans that the billionaire had taken out to finance expansion of his global aluminium-to-car parts empire. Yesterday he was forced to sell his 9.9 per cent stake in Hochtief, the German infrastructure company. He is thought to have sold this stake for 70 per cent less than he paid for it earlier in the year, a loss of about €350 million. His Basic Element investment vehicle was forced into the firesale of shares because it had used them as collateral on debt. Once the value of the shares fell, creditors made a margin call and he was forced to sell.

Mr Deripaska, who also owns the Leyland Daf (LDV) van company, was forced to hand over a $1.4 billion stake in Magna, a Canadian car parts company, to creditors this week.

A 25 per cent stake in Norilsk Nickel, owned by his aluminium company, Rusal, has fallen in value from $13 billion to $3.4 billion since he bought it.

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