Leonard Blavatnik is a big businessman from the United States with a bloodline of Ukraine with a global focus on three sectors, namely natural resources and chemicals, media and telecommunications, and real estate.
Blavatnik is also the founder and leader of Access Industries, a US private industry group with strategic investments throughout the world. Based on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Blavatnik’s wealth currently reaches around US $ 18.5 billion.
This man named Leonard Vallentino Blavatnik was in Odessa, Ukraine on July 14, 1957. After being raised in Russia, he immigrated to the United States in 1978 and became a US citizen in 1984.
In 1986, Blavatnik founded Access Industries (AI), an international conglomerate company located in New York. AI has investment ownership in Europe and North and South America.
Four years after its founding, he invited his former classmate Viktor Vekselberg to invest in an aluminum business privatized by Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
After the Russian aluminum war era, the two began buying smelters, finally merging assets with United Co. Rusal, who is now the largest aluminum producer in the world.
Since then, Access has diversified its portfolio and invested in industries such as oil, entertainment, coal, aluminum, petrochemicals and plastics, telecommunications, media and real estate.
With Vekselberg and three billionaire partners from Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group, Blavatnik acquired a 40% stake in TNK in 1997, taking over a state-owned oil company that had interests in several Western Siberian oil fields
In August 2005, Access Industries acquired a petrochemical producer and plastic producer Basell Polyolefins from Royal Dutch Shell and BASF for $ 5.7 billion.
Blavatnik is famous for its profitable and often risky business actions. On December 20, 2007, Basell completed the acquisition of Lyondell Chemical Company for around US $ 19 billion, and changed its name to LyondellBasell Industries, which became the eighth largest chemical company in the world based on net sales. But in early 2009, LyondellBasell filed for bankruptcy amid a financial crisis.
In 2011, he again raised maker LyondellBasell from bankruptcy, and in 2014, the value of its shares had surged to more than US $ 10 billion, making some people call this action the biggest deal in Wall Street history. The Federal Trade Commission charges a fine of US $ 656,000 which is relatively small because it failed to report its investment in the company.
As part of corporate financing, LyondellBasell collects US $ 3.25 billion in first priority debt and $ 2.8 billion rights offerings which are jointly borne by Access Industries, Apollo Management and Ares management.
