During a December whirlwind world tour, Alwaleed stopped in Moscow and met with the mayor and with powerful industrialist Vladimir Potanin.
So Mr Potanin has brought in another metals magnate, Alisher Usmanov, who owns iron-ore mines and has links to Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas giant.
In March, Vladimir Potanin, a Russian tycoon who controls Norilsk, bought a stake in Gold Fields as a way of diversifying his own interests outside Russia.
Uneximbank's boss, Vladimir Potanin, a former first-deputy prime minister, helped design a programme for privatising state assets, of which his own group became a leading purchaser.
Not to be outdone, Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin pledged have his wealth to charity during the recent Giving Pledge conference founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
The new paper belongs to Vladimir Potanin's Uneximbank, now Russia's most powerful financial group, which already has a big stake in Komsomolskaya Pravda and took over Izvestia this summer.
If the deal with Iamgold goes ahead, Mr Potanin's interest in Gold Fields' international assets, which include mines in a dozen or so countries around the world, would be diluted.
Much of the money comes from a group of corporate sponsors and investors that includes state-owned lender OAO Sberbank, state-owned oil giant OAO Rosneft and oligarch Vladimir Potanin's holding company Interros.
Soon after that, he split with his longtime partner, Vladimir Potanin, a former deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin with close ties to the Kremlin, leading to asset sales and division of assets.
Norilsk's motives are also fairly clear: Mr Potanin would like to get a foothold outside Russia in case the government there decides to bully metals producers as it has done Yukos, the country's largest oil company.
Besides Branson (along with his wife, Joan), Pinchuk and Tan, the new Pledgers are: Andrew and Nicola Forrest (Australia), Patrice and Precious Motsepe (South Africa), Hasso Plattner (Germany), Vladimir Potanin (Russia), Azim Premji (India) and John Caudwell, Chris and Jamie Cooper-Hohn, Mo Ibrahim, David Sainsbury (all from the U.K).
FORBES: The Giving Pledge Goes Global -- Warren Buffett Details America's Latest 'Export'
According to Forbes, he and associate Vladimir Potanin, who is at 34 on the Forbes' rich list and was a onetime deputy prime minister under former President Boris Yeltsin, wooed the corporate customers of two huge Soviet-era banks as their holding company Interros acquired interests in metals, engineering, agriculture and media.
CNN: Prokhorov: Metals mogul hoping to shine in Kremlin race
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