Serhiy Leonidovych Tihipko (Ukrainian: Сергій Леонідович Тiгiпко; born 13 February 1960) is a Ukrainian businessman and politician who was Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine. After founding the TAS Group conglomerate in 1998, Tihipko was Minister of Economics in 2000 and subsequently served as Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine from 2002 to 2004. He ran unsuccessfully for President of Ukraine in the 2010 presidential election and participated in the 2014 presidential election, in which he placed fifth with 5.23 percent of the vote. Tihipko is also a former Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Social Policy.

Tihipko was born on 13 February 1960 in the village of Drăgănești, Sîngerei, in the Lazovskiy district of the Moldavian SSR in a Ukrainian family who moved there from Podolia in 1902. His father fought in World War II, where he was badly wounded, and died when Tihipko was 10. His mother was a village nurse. He has two brothers: one six years older, and one two years younger.

Tihipko grew up in suburb of Chișinau and moved to Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, after finishing school when he was 17.

Tihipko was educated at the local school in Lazovskiy district, and then went to university in Dnipropetrovsk, where he graduated in engineering-metallurgy from the Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute in 1982.

He served in the Soviet Army in a tank regiment from 1982 to 1984.

Tihipko was first head of a department, and then deputy director for teaching and educational work at the Dnipropetrovsk Mechanical-Metallurgical Technical Secondary School from 1984 to 1986. At the same time he developed a strong career in Komsomol, the youth arm of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This enabled him to become First Secretary of Dnipropetrovsk Komsomol regional organization from 1986 to 1989; there were nearly half a million members of Komsomol in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and Tihipko became its first popularly elected First Secretary in 1989. From 1989 to 1991, Tihipko was the First Secretary of Dnipropetrovsk regional committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League.

"After the break up of the Soviet Union and the results of the political power struggles that followed he decided to put his political interests aside and start a business career as a manager in a private bank. This was an undeveloped industry in the early stages of the former Soviet Union and it turned out to be a shrewd move." He "made swift progress and from 1991–1992 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of a small commercial bank called Dnipro Bank. From there, he became Chairman of the Board of the commercial bank Privatbank until 1997, helping in taking the small regional bank to become one of the biggest private banks in Eastern Europe."

In 1994, he became a non-staff consultant on monetary policy to the President Leonid Kuchma. He was also an advisor to Kuchma in the lead up to the introduction of the national currency, the Hryvnia in 1996. Realising that there was a conflict of interest between his political role and his shareholding in Privat Bank, he divested himself of the shares