Rashnikov is the chairman of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works, a Russian steel and pipe producer. The publicly traded company had revenue of $7.3 billion in 2025. Rashnikov acquired most of its stock in the 1990s by buying shares distributed by the Russian government to plant workers following the fall of the Soviet Union.
The majority of Rashnikov's fortune is derived from his 79.8% stake in publicly traded Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works, a formerly state-owned steel maker.
Rashnikov was employed by the company in 1967 and began buying shares in the plant during Russia's post-Soviet privatization era. He listed the company on the London Stock Exchange in April 2007. Rashnikov controls the shares through Russia-based holding company ALTAIR, according to a March 3, 2022 company statement.
The imposition of US sanctions on the Moscow Stock Exchange in June 2024 led to a change in the valuation methodology used in this analysis. The company is now valued using reported financial results and the average enterprise value-to-sales and price-to-sales multiples of three publicly traded peers: BlueScope Steel Ltd, Baoshan Iron & Steel Co Ltd and Nippon Steel Corp.
The billionaire began diversifying into real estate in 2004, investing over $300 million in commercial properties in Moscow.
Cash investments are based on an analysis of dividends, taxes, market performance, insider transactions and other investment expenses. They were updated on Feb. 13, 2025 to reflect the performance of a Russia inflation index.
Kirill Golubkov, a Magnitogorsk spokesperson, declined to comment on the net worth calculation.
Rashnikov was sanctioned by the European Union in 2022 over the conflict in Ukraine.
Victor Rashnikov was born in 1948, in Magnitogorsk, an industrial city located in the Chelyabinsk region of southern Russia, just north of Kazakhstan. He began working as a fitter at the city's biggest plant, Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, in 1967, and graduated from Magnitogorsk Institute of Mining and Metallurgy at age 22 seven years later.
Rashnikov was appointed chief engineer and deputy general director of the plant in 1991, a year before it was reorganized into a joint-stock ownership structure, setting the stage for its subsequent privatization. Rashnikov accumulated a controlling stake in the plant by buying workers' shares that were distributed by the post-Soviet Russian government as part of a program aimed at bringing private ownership to Russia. He was named general director in 1997.
Rashnikov defended the plant from a hostile takeover organized by future Russian billionaire, Iskandar Makhmudov, in 2001, and paid more than $2.3 billion to buy additional shares from the Russian state and Moscow-based steel maker Mechel, from 2004 to 2007. He disclosed that he held an 86 percent stake in 2007, the year he sold its shares in an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange.
The billionaire has since attempted to diversify his investments. He borrowed about $300 million in 2004, which he used to help fund the development projects of another Russian businessman Shalva Chigirinsky, according to a July 16, 2010 report in Russian newspaper, Vedomosti. The partners planned to build a luxury hotel opposite the Kremlin and an office tower in Moscow City, a commercial district in central Moscow. Chigirinskiy fled Russia in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and Rashnikov secured his ownership of the development projects in negotiations with Moscow authorities.
He lives in Magnitogorsk with his wife.