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Len Blavatnik

b. 1957 Specialist

A Soviet-born engineer who built a fortune from privatized Russian industry

Portrait of Len Blavatnik — Mark Neyman — 2018-02-04 — CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Len Blavatnik was born in Odessa in 1957 to a Jewish family that soon moved him to Yaroslavl, and he was studying applied mathematics at a Moscow railway engineering institute when he applied for an exit visa and left, unfinished degree behind him, for the United States in 1978. He earned a master's in computer science from Columbia in 1981 and, while working toward a Harvard MBA he would finish in 1989, founded a small trading company called Access Industries in 1986. Nothing about a Soviet emigre with a computer-science degree suggested what came next: the collapse of the country he had left behind turned into the largest opportunity of his career.

Access Industries rode the privatization of Soviet-era industry through the 1990s, and Blavatnik's stake in a joint oil venture called TNK, sold to BP in 2003 for eight billion dollars, supplied the fortune everything after it was built on. He pivoted the money west: a 2010 recapitalization that left Access controlling roughly a fifth of LyondellBasell, the world's largest polypropylene maker, and the 2011 purchase of Warner Music Group for 3.3 billion dollars, taken public in 2020 at a valuation of 13.3 billion. He built the sports-streaming service DAZN into a global operation, funded largely by Access's other cash flows through years of heavy losses before it turned toward profitability. Oxford took 75 million pounds from him in 2010 and put his name on its new school of government; Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 2017.

Blavatnik was born in Ukraine and, decades later, sanctioned by it: in December 2023, amid the Russian invasion, Kyiv placed him under sanctions over his historical ties to Russian oil, aluminum and metals assets and his former partnerships with Kremlin-linked oligarchs, ties dating to the same 1990s privatizations that built his fortune in the first place. Documented correspondence shows he exchanged messages with Jeffrey Epstein between 2009 and 2017, years after Epstein's first conviction, with no allegation that Blavatnik took part in Epstein's crimes. Critics of his giving, which by the 2020s had reached universities, museums and hospitals across Britain and the United States, have called it reputation laundering — an attempt to convert money made in the chaos of the Soviet collapse into the settled respectability of a knighthood and a building at Oxford with his name on it.

Blavatnik remains active past 65, running Access Industries from New York and expanding DAZN into new markets, and how history settles on him is still an open question rather than a closed one. Forbes puts his net worth near 27 billion dollars, spread across chemicals, media and real estate holdings. Whether the philanthropy outweighs the sanctions, or four decades of legitimate Western business-building outweighs the ties to Russian privatization that started it, is an argument playing out in real time across two governments, several universities and his own reputation, with no verdict yet in reach.

Lifespan

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Len Blavatnik's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

Notable works

Access Industries company
Founded as a small trading firm, later diversified across chemicals, media and real estate 1986
TNK oil venture sale to BP other
Access's stake sold for roughly $8 billion 2003
LyondellBasell recapitalization company
Access emerged owning roughly 21 percent of the world's largest polypropylene maker 2010
Warner Music Group acquisition company
Bought for $3.3 billion; taken public in 2020 at a $13.3 billion valuation 2011
Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford building
Founded with a 75 million pound gift 2010

Life in brief

with age at each point

June 14, 1957 aged 0 Born in Odessa, Ukrainian SSR
1978 aged ~21 Emigrates to the United States
1986 aged ~29 Founds Access Industries
1989 aged ~32 Earns his Harvard MBA
2003 aged ~46 TNK oil venture sold to BP for $8 billion
2010 aged ~53 Gives Oxford 75 million pounds to found the Blavatnik School of Government
2011 aged ~54 Acquires Warner Music Group
2017 aged ~60 Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II
December 2023 aged 66 Sanctioned by Ukraine over historical Russian business ties