Vladimir Potanin Quotes

#1. 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.

Vladimir Potanin

#2. 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.

Vladimir Potanin

#3. 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.

Vladimir Potanin

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

Vladimir Potanin

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

Vladimir Potanin

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

Vladimir Potanin

#7. It is not good to demonstrate your luxury and your wealth: to rub it in the faces of others is insulting. So you should be modest; try not to insult people by showing that you can do what they cannot.

Vladimir Potanin

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

Vladimir Potanin

#9. 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.

Vladimir Potanin

#10. To create a big company, you need more partners, as it is hard to handle such a project alone. Such projects bring access to the expertise and management resources of the partners, and their connections above all.

Vladimir Potanin

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

Vladimir Potanin

#12. Frankly speaking, I decided to become a businessman at the moment when I understood that it is possible, because I grew up in a country where it was not possible. There existed even a special article in the penal code of the Soviet Union which punished entrepreneurial activity.

Vladimir Potanin