Why fro-yo’s making a comeback 

ALEX SHNAIDER WASN’T LOOKING FOR NEW business opportunities when he first strolled into a Menchie’s. It was last spring and the Toronto tycoon was busy enough juggling the varied dealings of his multinational holding company, The Midland Group, while also fending off a legal challenge from disgruntled investors in the Trump Tower, the 65-storey hotel/condo Shnaider started developing in 2004. It was Shnaider’s first foray into luxury real-estate, and with it his first step into the limelight. Until partnering with Donald Trump on one of the swankiest real-estate deals in the country, Shnaider was a largely unknown, yet savvy young investor who quietly made his fortune in high-stakes commodities trading in post-Soviet republics. He flipped cheap steel-mills and factories in the Ukraine, bought the national electricity distributor in Armenia, and made billions by age 36. Today, the 44-year-old Russian-born entrepreneur is known, in the way billionaires are, for his indulgences—the cars, the yacht, the private jet—for buying a Formula One racing franchise, for his longstanding reign as a steel magnate and maybe the next king of frozen yogurt. Continue reading →