Vladimir Potanin Quotes & Sayings

“After I met my partner, Mr. Protherow, we decided to start a banking project, and at the same time we started to think already about a business on a bigger scale. At the very beginning we thought more about gaining money, to have a normal life with our families, etc.”

“I am not trying to say that I am poor and that I don't like beautiful things. But I don't like luxury for luxury sake or in the sense of showing off luxury.”

“Many people say the privatisation was unfair: that is true - it was unfair. That is a fact: some people became rich and others did not. Unfair does not mean illegal, but it was inevitably unfair.”

“For me, my father was, and still is, a symbol of qualified persons in the Ministry of Foreign Trade under Soviet conditions.”

“It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don't feel like an oligarch.”

“The Interros strategy toward various assets generally depends on the stage of their development and level of their maturity.”

“There are ways of fighting for your interests. I never do something in business that I wouldn't do in life.”

“When you supervise something, it is one thing. When you are in the middle of something, there is a different pace of life.”

“Everybody starts with creating or acquiring certain property in order to create the material to work with. When we started our business, we thought first of all about development, how to grow, and we managed to do this, even with all the difficulties and all the difficult rules that were implemented in Russia at that time.”

“For a rich and reasonably successful guy, it is impossible not to enjoy your job; otherwise, why would you spend so much time and effort doing it? I am a great fan of Norilsk, and I like this kind of challenge.”