We hear that Len Blavatnik, the multibillionaire owner of Warner Music Group, is going on a spending spree — of the philanthropic kind.
If his recent giving is any indication, Gotham’s schools of higher ed may be in for a windfall.
Last month Blavatnik donated $50 million to Harvard University and $10 million to Yale University.
Not so coincidentally, the New Yorker’s business writer Connie Bruck is supposedly working on a big profile of the man who Forbes says is worth $16 billion.
We’d all certainly like to get to know Blavatnik a little better. He burst on the New York celebrity scene in 2011 with his $3.3 billion acquisition of Warner Music Group.
While Blavatnik had hoped to ultimately merge Warner with EMI (nabbed by Universal and Sony), his team was able to carve out the EMI asset Parlophone, thanks to European Union regulators and some nifty lobbying. Parlophone houses artists such as Kylie Minogue and Queen.
Blavatnik has investments in fashion house Tory Burch and movie interests with filmmaker Harvey Weinstein.
Who wouldn’t want to get into business with a guy who just netted $7 billion selling his stake in Russian oil company TNK-BP?
Blavatnik doesn’t much like chatting with the press, but he loves being part of the In crowd by doing things like taking his yacht to the Cannes Film Festival last month. We’re looking forward to seeing the beneficiaries of his largesse. Expect details this week. –Claire Atkinson
Ergen-omics
Billionaire Charlie Ergen’s integrity is again coming under question.
His company, Dish, in April made a $25 billion nonbinding bid for Sprint.
At the time, Ergen mostly succeeded in convincing skeptics that — even though he often bid for companies and then withdrew — this time was for real.
Skeptics believed he was just trying to complicate SoftBank’s $20 billion offer for the country’s third-biggest cellular carrier.
Last week, Dish made a rival offer to buy Sprint-controlled Clearwire, trumping Sprint’s proposal.
On the Money spies wonder: If Ergen were really serious about buying Sprint, wouldn’t he want Sprint to buy Clearwire on the cheap?
Institutional Shareholder Services, a proxy advisory firm, backed SoftBank’s offer in the June 12 shareholder vote. –Josh Kosman
Bytes ’n’ books
More than 20,000 avid book-lovers were estimated to have poured through the Javits Convention Center for Book Expo America last week.
“It’s all about digital and e-books,” said Roger Cooper, a former publisher at Vanguard who is now running Roger Cooper Book Associates.
Most industry pros said they noted no overlying theme at the show, although “chick lit” aimed at the summer beach reader is always a popular genre, even if not viewed as overwhelmingly literary.
Meanwhile, Jim Milliot, co-editorial director of Publishers Weekly, reported that “the [e-book] format has moved from sideline to vital category in five years. . . . The slowdown in growth in 2012 was not unexpected, as e-books have become a billion-dollar business.”
A panel on the future of e-books drew a standing-room-only turnout on Thursday afternoon.
For whatever reason, consumers embrace narrative fiction on e-readers but still prefer nonfiction and reference books in good old-fashioned ink on paper, the attendees heard.
One panelist, Michael Tamblyn, chief content officer of e-book company Kobo, said, “There are always going to be people who love the physicality of books on a page,” he said.
He noted that heavily illustrated books such as children’s literature will work better in print.
He added, “We haven’t yet seen the best-seller that is only digital. But it will happen. That author could be working on that book right now.”–Keith J. Kelly
Minor emergency
On the Money is familiar with the odd Lotto millionaire who blows through his winnings on wining and dining and goes broke, but now we have the first dot-com multimillionaire to file for bankruptcy in order to stay out of the poorhouse.
Halsey Minor, 47, co-founder of CNET Networks, who sold the property to CBS for $1.8 billion in 2008 and netted about $200 million for himself, has filed for Chapter 7 protection, claiming he owes as much as $100 million and has only $50 million to pay his creditors.–Post staff