Kazakhs join British super-rich

Young Kazakhs are among former eastern bloc businessmen at top of British industry

?SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'">         Simon Bowers and Tim Webb

?SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'">         http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/15/guardian-executive-pay-soviet-bloc

Borat is far from the image of the modern generation of Kazakh businessmen running companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange. Photograph: Phil Mccarten/Reuters

None of them could claim to be UK household names but a new generation of young, super-rich and powerful figures from former Soviet bloc mining empires has been edging into some of Britain's top boardrooms, according to the Guardian's annual survey of pay and directors.

In Kazakhstan, perhaps best known for the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's lampoon Borat, a band of low-profile young businessmen from the former Soviet state has emerged in important roles at Eurasian Natural Resources (ENRC) or Kazakhmys ?both FTSE-100 companies. Four of the 10 youngest directors in Britain's top companies sit on the boards of these two firms.

At 29, Kazakhmys's non-executive director Daulet Yergozhin was the youngest director in Britain's blue-chip boardrooms last year ?and Kazakhstan's deputy finance minister. He is nine years younger than Oleg Novachuk, chief executive of the ?bn copper mining firm. Yergozhin was a non-executive director of ENRC until 2007 and has been succeeded by government colleague and London School of Economics graduate Marat Beketayev, 32. An executive at ENRC is the FTSE 100's youngest finance director, Miguel Perry.

The youngest chief executive in the survey is a Ukrainian, Kostyantin Zhevago, 35, who used his controlling stake in the ?bn Ferrexpo Ukrainian iron ore mining group to muscle out chief executive Mike Oppenheimer and take personal charge.

Named by Forbes magazine as Europe's youngest self-made billionaire, Zhevago is said to have begun as finance director of a bank at 19 while studying in Kiev, and went on to gain majority control of its parent firm, Finance & Credit Group. As well as running a mining operation with 8,800 workers and revenues of $1.1bn, Zhevago is an MP and like many an oligarch, he also owns a football club, Vorskla Poltava.

Among the oldest directors were senior figures from the Schroders banking dynasty including George Mallinckrodt, 78, and his brother-in-law Bruno Schroder, 76, both of whom attended Schroders' board meetings last year. Mallinckrodt stepped down in December after 64 years but his son Philip has joined the board, which is chaired by Michael Miles, 72.

The average age of the 12 youngest directors is 35.5. It was 39.75 last year.