Too young to gain from the 1990s privatizations that made many oligarchs fortunes, he began trading currency with two friends while a physics student at Moscow State University, taking advantage of the opportunities that opened up in a newly capitalist Russia. After the Soviet Union fell, the trio registered a bank, before Melnichenko began buying assets including in thermal coal and fertilizers. Branching out at the turn of the millennium, he took an interest in the commodities markets with the acquisition of plants and mines, many of which were distressed, transforming them into modern enterprises. He sold his banking interests in 2007, just before the global financial crisis, allowing him to focus on those industrial investments. As Bloomberg reports, Melnichenko "consolidated fragmented assets in risky and then-derelict industries and created leading international blue chips in new areas" noting that "these industries were not considered to be ‘strategic’ for Russia and were not subject to the political influence that dominated other sectors, like oil and gas, diamond and gold mining." Melnichenko turned EuroChem into Russia's largest manufacturer of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers and one of largest fertilizers exporters globally, and SUEK into one of the world's largest coal energy companies that produces higher-quality thermal coal. In the last 15 years, Melnichenko's companies reportedly invested more than $23 billion in the industrial sector.