Alexander Knaster is a Russian investor with an estimated net worth of $1.7 billion as of March 2013. According to Forbes, he is ranked 882nd in the list of World Billionaires and 328th in the “Forbes 400” list. Born Alexander Mark Knaster in Moscow, he used to be a banker whose parents emigrated to U.S. and became U.S. citizens in 1976. During the 1990's, he returned to Russia to head the operation in Moscow of Credit Suisse First Boston. Later on, he became the chief of the largest private commercial bank in Russia, the Alfa Bank from 1998 to 2004.

Knaster is TNK-BP board member and part of a group of Russian investors, which included Mikhail Fridman and Viktor Vekselberg, who all agreed to sell a 50% stake in the joint oil venture, to state-owned Rosneft for a reported $28 billion. This is expected to close in the spring of 2013.

Currently, Knaster is the Chairman and CEO of Pamplona Capital Management, a British private equity firm that he founded in 2005. The firm’s clients include the Alfa Group. Together with other Russian-Jewish investors, he formed the Genesis Philanthropy Group in 2007. It is a foundation that helps promote Jewish identity among Russian-speaking Jews worldwide. He has donated significant amount to his alma mater, Carnegie-Mellon University. He also created the Alexander M. Knaster Scholarship Fund in order to aid full-time undergraduate students in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering in the university.