Building Access Industries
Blavatnik's fortune is held through Access Industries, the private investment company he founded in New York in 1986. In its first years Access was a small trading and consulting firm, but the collapse of the Soviet Union opened opportunities for investors who understood the region, and Blavatnik, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, moved quickly.
In the 1990s he teamed up with Viktor Vekselberg to buy stakes in privatized Russian aluminum smelters and in the oil company TNK. The aluminum assets were combined into SUAL, which later merged with Rusal. TNK was joined with BP's Russian operations in 2003 to form TNK-BP, one of the largest oil producers in the country. In 2013 the Russian partners sold their half of TNK-BP to the state controlled oil company Rosneft for a very large sum in cash and shares, giving Access a deep pool of capital.
Before that sale Blavatnik had already begun moving money into Western businesses. Access bought the Dutch petrochemicals group Basell in 2005 and the American chemicals maker Lyondell in 2007, forming LyondellBasell. The combined company went through bankruptcy during the financial crisis but emerged in 2010 and became highly profitable, rewarding Access as its main shareholder.
Music, media and other holdings
In 2011 Access acquired Warner Music Group, home of labels such as Atlantic and Warner Records and a large music publishing catalog. The purchase came as music streaming was beginning to revive the industry, and Warner Music returned to the public market in 2020 with Access still holding control.
Other parts of the portfolio include:
- DAZN, a sports streaming service that holds broadcasting rights in many countries
- Venture investments in technology companies, including early stakes in consumer internet firms
- Real estate and hotels, including a partnership in the Faena district in Miami Beach
LyondellBasell remains a major holding, although Access has reduced its stake over time. Access describes itself as a long term investor and is run from offices in New York and London. Blavatnik remains chairman, while a team of professional executives manages the individual businesses and handles new deals. The firm tends to buy controlling positions and to hold them for many years rather than trading in and out.
From Odessa to New York
Leonard Blavatnik was born in 1957 in Odessa, in what was then Soviet Ukraine, and grew up in Yaroslavl in Russia. He studied at a Moscow transport engineering institute before his family emigrated to the United States in 1978.
In New York he worked as a computer programmer and studied computer science at Columbia University, earning a master's degree. He became an American citizen in 1984 and then completed an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1989. During his business school years he was already building connections with fellow emigres and contacts in Moscow, which helped him spot early privatization opportunities.
He later settled in London and became a British citizen in 2010. He was knighted in 2017 for services to philanthropy. He has also spent time in the United States, and his holdings remain spread across both countries.
A philanthropist across science and culture
Blavatnik has given large sums to universities and cultural institutions through the Blavatnik Family Foundation. In 2010 he funded the creation of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, which opened in a new building in 2015. In 2016 Tate Modern in London opened the Blavatnik Building, its large extension, named for his donation.
In the United States he started the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists with the New York Academy of Sciences in 2007, later extended to Britain and Israel. He has made major gifts to Harvard Medical School to support biomedical research and to help researchers turn discoveries into treatments, and he has supported Yale, Stanford and Tel Aviv University.
His philanthropy has at times drawn debate because of the Russian origin of part of his fortune. After 2022 some commentators in Britain called for institutions to review his gifts. He has not been placed under sanctions, and his representatives have stressed that he left the Soviet Union decades ago and has lived and done business mainly in the West since then.