Russian billionaire club loses two thirds of members

By Robin Paxton

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's economic slowdown has shredded the net worth of its richest people by more than 70 percent in the last year and slashed membership of its billionaires club by two thirds.

Mikhail Prokhorov, despite losing $13.1 billion (8.9 billion pounds), topped the annual rich list published on Friday by the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. The mining tycoon's $9.5 billion fortune made him $1 billion richer than second-placed Roman Abramovich.

"The crisis has affected everyone: financiers and developers, metallurgists and oil men, consumer goods producers and sellers and the owners of diversified holdings," Forbes said in an editorial accompanying the list.

"Not a single entrepreneur is in a better position than a year ago."

Russia is facing its first recession in a decade after growing accustomed to commodity-fuelled growth. Stock markets have tumbled by over two thirds since peaking last May and the rouble has lost a third of its value against the dollar.

Russian businessmen who borrowed heavily when money was cheap are battling to restructure their share of the $130 billion in corporate debt due to mature this year, a task made harder when the state halted bailouts to plug a budget deficit.

Hardest hit has been Oleg Deripaska, whose $25.1 billion loss was equivalent to about a quarter of the cumulative losses of Russia's 10 richest men. The aluminium tycoon dropped to 10th on the Forbes list after topping last year's rankings.

Alexei Mordashov, owner of steel maker Severstal, also lost more than $20 billion to drop to seventh from second.