Mantashev Family

a family of big Russian oil industrialists. The founder of the Mantashev’s “dynasty” was Aleksandr Ivanovich Mantashev (born 1849; died Apr. 19, 1911), son of a Tbilisi Armenian merchant.

In Baku in 1899, Mantashev founded A. I. Mantashev and Company, an oil processing and trading firm. In the late 1890’s, through financial speculations, he had become one of the richest men in Russia: in 1899, the joint capital stock of the company amounted to 22 million rubles, whereas in 1914 it had risen to 30 million rubles. Mantashev was a shareholder in a number of oil corporations (including the Nobel Brothers’ Company) and banks and owned considerable real estate. His chief heirs were his four sons, who emigrated after the October Revolution of 1917.