Russia's financial crisis has seen the Russian equity market's total capitalization plummet to $345.9 billion from $647.4 billion, as measured by the RTS index. That makes all the country's public companies together worth about as much as Google, valued at $349.1 billion, and less than Apple, Microsoft, Exxon Mobil or Berkshire Hathaway. Russian billionaires have lost big chunks of their fortunes, and now, in some cases, the prestigious toys they have acquired abroad are said to be worth as much as the Russian industrial assets that made them rich.
This kind of analysis is largely meaningless, however: Markets are fickle, and wealth as measured by Bloomberg Billionaires, or its competitors over at Forbes, is too volatile to matter much to the ultra-rich themselves. It does, however, say something important about why the Russian billionaires are, for the most part, wedded to the country that nourished them: Actual cash flows to their assets in Russia are relatively high.
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