During a December whirlwind world tour, Alwaleed stopped in Moscow and met with the mayor and with powerful industrialist Vladimir Potanin.

FORBES: Riding the coattails of the global boom

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.

ECONOMIST: A new gold standard?

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.

ECONOMIST: Russian finance

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.

FORBES: Russian Oligarch Pledges Half His Wealth To Charity

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.

ECONOMIST: Russia

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.

WSJ: Menu

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.

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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