Victor Pinchuk - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Pinchuk was born in 1960 in Kyiv to Jewish parents who moved to the industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk. He graduated from the Metallurgy institute of Dnipropetrovsk in 1983, 7 years later he founded Interpipe Company on the basis of his patented innovations which were successfully adopted by leading metallurgical factories in the USSR.

Interpipe Corporation, whose customers include Gazprom and Rosneft, is a major producer of seamless pipes and railway wheels. In 2004, Interpipe became the first Ukrainian company member of the World Economic Forum. Interpipe is very active in the fight against HIV/AIDS at the workplace and in 2004 became the first Eastern European company member of the Global Business Coalition against HIV/AIDS. In 2004 Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov, two of Ukraine's richest men, acquired the Kryvorizhstal steel factory for about $800 million. Later, the first Tymoshenko Government reversed this sale, and held a nationally-televised repeat auction that netted a $4.8 billion. In 2006, Pinchuk founded an investment advisory company, EastOne. Its portfolio includes industrial assets such as production of pipes and tubes, railcar wheels, specialty steels and alloys, machinery, as well as media.

Pinchuk served as a MP of the third (1998–2002) and fourth (2002–2006, for Labour Ukraine) convocations of Parliament. At this point in time he left politics since he believes Ukraine has reached a level of development when business and politics should be separated.

For more than ten years Pinchuk has supported philanthropic projects in Ukraine. In 2006, he consolidated these activities under the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, which is now considered the largest private Ukrainian philanthropic foundation.

Its projects include the creation of a network of modern neonatal centres throughout Ukraine, cooperation programs with the Clinton Global Initiative, the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the ANTIAIDS Foundation of his wife Olena Pinchuk, the creation of the Kyiv School of Economics, a cooperation with the Aspen Institute, the opening of the first large scale contemporary art centre in Ukraine PinchukArtCentre, the creation and development of the only Ukrainian private chamber orchestra, the production and promotion of a film with Steven Spielberg on the Holocaust in Ukraine, human rights projects with George Soros and support of local Jewish communities.

In 2004, he created the Yalta European Strategy (YES) - an international independent organization that is promoting Ukraine joining the European Union. Its annual summer meeting in Yalta has become the main high-level Ukraine-EU forum for debate and policy recommendations development. At the recent annual meetings among others, Bill Clinton, Stefan Fule, Paul Krugman, Alexei Kudrin, Shimon Peres, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Larry Summers and other political and business leaders were present to discuss Ukraine's European perspectives and global challenges. Pinchuk has long promoted closer ties between Ukraine and the EU.

Pinchuk is a member of the Board of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, of the International Advisory Council of Brookings Institution and of the Corporate Advisory Board of the Global Business Coalition against HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria.

In June 2009 Pinchuk organized the Paul McCartney free concert on the Maidan Square in Kyiv in front of 500,000 people. As an initiative of the Pinchuk Art Center, in December 2009 Pinchuk announced a new $100,000 prize for artists under the age of 35. The Future Generation Art Prize is awarded every two years and is open to any young artist who applies online. The jury includes Elton John, Eli Broad, Richard Armstrong, Glenn D. Lowry and/or Miuccia Prada. Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, Andreas Gursky and Jeff Koons, artists whose work Pinchuk collects, serve as mentors who support to the finalists and the winner. In December 2010, the main prize was awarded to Brazilian artist Cinthia Marcelle.