Russian businessman keep away heirs from family trade

Moscow, May 29 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Russian businessmen prefer to keep their heirs away from family business in a bid to spare them from the “burden and uncertainty that accompany running a large business”.

A poll conducted by UBS and Campden Research companies revealed only 32 percent of the respondents want their children to continue the business while 68 percent insist their offspring choose their own career.

The survey was conducted among 25 Russian businessmen, whose fortune exceeds $100 million.

“I do not want to deliver the burden and uncertainty that accompany running a large business in Russia to my children,” Vedomosti daily, which published the survey, quoted one of the respondents as saying.

“In this country, you don’t need to be an entrepreneur in order to become rich. You just have to be in the same circles as bureaucrats to make money,” another participant said.

Despite a widespread notion that Russian businessmen are extravagant, the poll said they are unpretentious in their private lives. Two of the respondents have a yacht, while only a few people collect watches, wine and art pieces.

Half of those surveyed said they do not have any luxury items.

“My children go to school in Britain where they will acquire genuine values. Here, in Rublyovka (a posh district in Moscow), everybody’s got plenty of money so you can hear children speaking about Bentleys and Ferraris. That is why I realized I had to do something about it,” another respondent was quoted as saying.

“Many businessmen tend not to flash their wealth. They want to stay quite in the hostile atmosphere. Some deliberately cap their income level to $100 million because they do not want to attract the attention of authorities, a business union expert Anton Danilov-Danilyan said.

Danilov-Danilyan said 25 businessmen involved in a poll is not a sociologically significant figure.

–IANS/RIA Novosti