In 1993, a 29-year-old Bill Browder set himself up in a Moscow hotel room and started buying Russian assets using $25 million from his employer, Salomon Brothers. A decade later, he was managing more than $4 billion in Russia investments at his own firm, with his investors making well over 20 times their money.
The Russia bet was a winner for most any portfolio investor, but Mr. Browder’s specialty amplified returns: shareholder activism based on a forensic analysis of corruption inside formerly state-owned companies. Eventually Mr. Browder fell afoul of the criminal-governmental nexus at the heart of modern Russia. He was expelled from the country, and his crusading lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was slowly, excruciatingly murdered in a series of Russian prisons.
Mr. Browder’s 2015 book, “Red Notice,” is a classic. His professional path to Russia during those pioneering days before the country even had a stock market, his profitable exposing of the criminality behind giants like Gazprom, even his personal life through these ups and downs—all match a remarkable story with a truly gifted writer. Mr. Browder also single-handedly drove the creation of the Magnitsky Act, which authorizes the U.S. to sanction foreign officials for human-rights offenses. Today more than 30 countries have some version of the law on their books.
