FORBES.COM NOVEMBER 30, 20 1926
FRONTRUNNERNEW^BILLIONAIREBYHAYLEYCUCCINELLOARSENIY^ NESKHODIMOVoris Jordan moved to
Moscow in 1992, a year
after the fall of the Soviet
Union. Three years later, the
then-28-year-old founded
Renaissance Capital, which was one of Rus-
sia’s most successful investment fi rms before
the 2008 recession. The Sea Cliff , New York,
native, who studied political science at New
York University, still has investments in Rus-
sia, including a stake in Renaissance Insur-
ance, which has $1.1 billion in revenues.
The bulk of Jordan’s $1 billion fortune
comes from an investment he made after he
moved back to the United States in 2012. A
neighbor pestered him to invest in medical
marijuana. Jordan was initially cool on the
idea, but eventually he came to see paral-
lels between the nascent gray-market pot
industry and doing business in Russia in the
early 1990s. “There were no capital markets
there, no regulation and a lack of transpar-
ency,” he recalls.Jordan fi rst invested in Curaleaf, then
called PalliaTech, in 2012, when recreational
marijuana was legal only in Washington
State and medical use was approved in just
18 states and Washington, D.C. It’s not yet
a huge company—revenues last year were
$77 million—but that’s enough to make it
one of the biggest marijuana companies in
the U.S. Pot stocks are highly valued, too:
Curaleaf ’s shares trade in Toronto; Jordan’s
31% stake was recently worth $900 million.
Marijuana is now fully legal in 11 states,
including California, but Jordan is predicting
that it will be legal across the entire country
in the next three to fi ve years. Of course, le-
galization would bring new competitors into
a crowded fi eld, but he thinks Curaleaf can
stay on top, in part by acquiring rivals like
Grassroots Cannabis, which it agreed to buy
this summer for $875 million in cash and
stock. Says Jordan, “Competition will grow,
but those players who come fi rst and have
developed brands will win this game.”HIGH NET WORTH
Seven years ago, selling pot in America was a shady business.
But new marijuana billionaire Boris Jordan wasn’t scared off —aft er all,
he had cut his teeth investing in Russia in the early 1990s.New Billionaire
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Leaders from the worlds
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