- Source of Wealth: Sea Port
- Marital Status: Married
- Full Name: Alexander Anatolyevich Ponomarenko
- Nationality: Russian
- Occupation: Co-Founder of Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port
- Education: Simferopol State University and Russian State Academy of Management
- Children: two children
Alexander Ponomarenko is a shipping magnate with an estimated net worth of over $2.3 billion as of April 2016, according to Forbes. He is the 48th richest person in Russia and 704th on the list of Word Billionaires. Born Alexander Anatolyevich Ponomarenko, he graduated from Simferopol State University and earned a doctorate in economics from the Russian State Academy of Management.
Ponomarenko began earning his estimated net worth of $2.1 billion when he and his partner Alexander Skorobogatko established a small perfume factory in the Ukraine. They also founded the Russian General Bank in Moscow which served the Novorossiysk port operation. Together, they began buying up shares in stevedoring companies at the port after the 1998 Russian financial crisis. Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port was formed after these companies were combined and it went public in 2007 which resulted in an unexpected gain of $1 billion for the partners.
In January 2011, Ponomarenko and Skorobgatko earned $1 billion after they sold a stake of the company to state-owned Transneft and its affiliate Summa Capital. Two months after, Ponomarenko bought “Putin’s Palaca”, a lavish holiday complex nearby on the Black Sea, for $350 million. During that summer, the 8,000-square-meter complex was leased for $1 million.
In 2008, Ponomarenko and Skorobgatko sold 20% of their stake to Arkady Rotenberg, a billionaire businessman who practices judo with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They joined Rotenberg in the summer of 2012 to found TPS Real Estate Holding Ltd with a capital of $15.5 billion.