Alfa-Eco and TNK (1989–1990s)
After a chance meeting with businessman Mikhail Fridman, who had also been a student at MISIS, Khan was asked to head-up a wholesale trade business Alfa Eco as part of a wider company, Alfa Group Consortium. The company began by buying and selling a range of products including the purchase, upholstery and sale of carpets to domestic and then later, export markets. Khan took on a number of managerial positions within the company as it expanded into new areas, including head of the wholesale trade department, then head of the export department.[1] Currently under the umbrella company Alfa Group Consortium, other divisions now include Alfa Capital Management, Rosvodokanal Group, AlfaStrakhovanie Group and A1 Group. It also holds interests in the telecommunications company Vimpelcom and Russia's biggest food retailer, X5 Group.
Khan held a number of managerial positions at Alfa Group starting in 1992. With Alfa-Eco restructured as the trading arm of the Alfa Group, Khan was Alfa-Eco's head of trade operations until 1996 and its director of commodity trading from 1995 to 1998. He became president in 1996, where for his two-year tenure he was instrumental in directing the company to focus on export and the oil trade. The company started by purchasing crude, securing contracts with refiners to process it, and then selling the refined product. In 1997, Alfa Group Consortium together with Access Industries and Renova Group acquired the state-owned TNK Oil Company (Tyumen Oil Company). Alfa Group purchased 40% of TNK's shares. When Alfa bought Tyumen Oil (TNK), he joined the board and remained involved in M&A deals. Khan was appointed deputy chairman of the management board of TNK in 2000, retaining the role until 2003.
TNK-BP leadership (2003–2013)
In 2003, Alfa Group sold exactly half of TNK to BP for US$6.15 billion, in what was the biggest foreign investment in Russia to date equivalent to $8 billion in invested assets. The deal resulted in the formation of the oil company TNK-BP, with half of the joint venture owned by BP, and the other 50 percent owned by the Alfa Group together with billionaire partners Viktor Vekselberg, and Leonard Blavatnik. From 2003 to 2013, Khan was executive director of TNK-BP Management (now called TNK-BP Holding), and a member of the management board. While managing TNK-BP, Khan remained involved with the Alfa Group at large. Alfa Group bought a stake in Turkcell in 2005, and by April 2007, Alfa Group controlled a 43.5% stake in Kyivstar, a Ukrainian telecom company.
During Khan's tenure as a TNK-BP executive director, TNK-BP became Russia's third largest oil company and globally a top ten private oil producer. Without a majority stakeholder in the company to dictate choices, by 2008, BP executives were in conflict with AAR over TNK-BP's strategy to internationalise the business. After several ongoing lawsuits, issues between AAR and BP were compounded in 2010, after Khan and Fridman resisted BP's push to do business with the state-owned oil company Rosneft in Russia, contrary to their shareholder agreement. By 2011, Khan's net worth was estimated at $9.6 billion, which placed him at 92 on the Forbes billionaires list, also ranking him as the thirteenth wealthiest person in Russia.
Founding LetterOne and L1 Energy (2013–2015)
In July 2012, TNK-BP was sold to the state-owned Rosneft for $56 billion, a process which was still underway by early 2013. Reuters described it as "one of the biggest energy takeovers in history," with the overall deal worth $55 billion. Khan officially left TNK-BP in March 2013 after Alfa Group sold its 50% stake in TNK-BP to Rosneft for $28 billion. Khan earned around $3.3 billion in the deal. Using the $14 billion raised from selling their stakes in TNK-BP, Khan joined Mickhail Fridman in establishing LetterOne (L1), based in Luxembourg, for the purpose of investing the proceeds from the sale of TNK-BP in international projects.
LetterOne's L1 Energy was founded in 2013 with Lord Browne, former CEO of BP, James Hackett of Anadarko Petroleum and Andrew Gould of BG joining L1 Energy Advisory Board. The 2014 downturn in the oil industry and the falling ruble value in Russia led to Khan losing about 22% of his estimated value in 2014, or about $2.5 billion in one year. By that point, his overall value was estimated at £6.3 billion.
North Sea assets, L1 divisions (2015–2016)
On 3 March 2015, L1 Energy purchased 100% of DEA, an international exploration and production company owned by the German utility RWE, for US$7 billion (€5.1 billion). RWE DEA had total natural gas production output of 2.6bn cubic metres in 2013. The deal was approved by Germany and seven other national and supranational authorities, including the European Union and Ukraine. Despite this, the L1 purchase of RWE DEA was opposed by UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey, who "raised concerns" that sanctions might "force L1 Energy to shut down production in the North Sea, imperiling oil supplies" and 5% of Britain's North Sea natural gas output.
DEA sold its North Sea oil fields to Ineos, the chemical company owned by Jim Ratcliffe, for an undisclosed sum in October 2015. At the time, the British government assured LetterOne that the forced sale of DEA's UK assets was "not a judgement on the suitability of LetterOne’s owners to control these or any other assets in the UK." On 14 October 2015, LetterOne Group announced that it had agreed a deal to acquire German utility E.ON's interests in three producing Norwegian fields, all located in the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Norway's oil minister supported the deal and said that approval would be handled "in the usual way." As of 2016, Khan retains positions on the supervisory board at both Alfa Group Consortium and Alfa Group. He is also a director at Alfa Finance Holdings SA, Alfa Bank ABH Holdings S.A., LetterOne Holdings S.A., and the supervisory board of
Sanctions (2022)
Khan (along with Fridman and Kuzmichev) was sanctioned by the EU and UK in February and March 2022 as part of an extensive package of sanctions against Russian officials and oligarchs imposed in response to the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine. Khan stepped down from the LetterOne board in March. In April Alfa Bank was hit with sanctions by the U.S.[2][3]
In June 2025, the EU General Court rejected delisting applications by Alfa-Bank JSC and German Khan, affirming the legality of the criteria used to include them on the EU sanctions list.[4]
In January 2025, the UK Court of Appeal dismissed Anzhelika Khan’s appeal attempting to overturn UK sanctions imposed on her in April 2022.[5] The court upheld that her designation on the basis of financial benefit from German Khan and marital association was rationally connected to the sanctions regime’s objectives.[6]
