Evgeny Lebedev

Evgeny Alexandrovich Lebedev (Russian: Евгений Александрович Лебедев, pronounced [jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ˈlʲebʲɪdʲɪv]; born 8 May 1980) is a Russian-British businessman, who is the owner of Lebedev Holdings Ltd, which owns the Evening Standard, The Independent and the TV channel London Live.

Evgeny Lebedev
Lebedev in 2015
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Assumed office
31 July 2020
Life peerage
Personal details
Born
Evgeny Alexandrovich Lebedev

(1980-05-08) 8 May 1980
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
NationalityRussian, British
ParentsAlexander Lebedev
Natalia Sokolova
RelativesVladimir Sokolov (grandfather)
ResidenceLondon, England
EducationHolland Park School
Mill Hill School

This name uses Eastern Slavic naming customs; the patronymic is Alexandrovich and the family name is Lebedev.

In 2020, Lebedev was nominated for a life peerage by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson for his services to the British media industry and philanthropic work, including in wildlife conservation.[1][2]

Early life and education

Born in Moscow, Lebedev is the son of Alexander Lebedev, a part-owner of the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta and former spy for the KGB and later its successor the FSB, and his first wife Natalia Sokolova. He moved to London at the age of eight, when his father began working for the KGB. His father was in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, where he worked until 1992. In London, he had the diplomatic cover of an economic attaché.[3]

Lebedev attended St Barnabas and St Philip's Church of England Primary School in Kensington, followed by Holland Park comprehensive and Mill Hill boarding school. He then went on to study the history of art at Christie's in London. He has lived in the UK ever since, and became a British citizen (with dual nationality) in 2010.[4][5]

His maternal grandfather Vladimir Sokolov was a scientist, and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, later the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Media interests

On 21 January 2009, Evgeny and Alexander Lebedev bought a 65% share in the Evening Standard newspaper.[6] The previous owners, Daily Mail and General Trust plc, continue to hold 24.9% of the company.[7] Under the Lebedevs' ownership, the Evening Standard became a free newspaper in October 2009, and confounded industry observers by moving from large losses to become profitable. Circulation tripled immediately to 700,000.[8] In January 2014, the circulation was increased to 900,000, and the paper now has a readership of more than 2 million people in London.

On 25 March 2010, just weeks before it was due to close, Lebedev bought The Independent and The Independent on Sunday. On 26 October 2010, the i newspaper was launched, the first national daily newspaper to be launched in the UK since The Independent in 1986, at a time of falling newspaper circulations and title closures worldwide.[9]

The i was named National Newspaper of the Year in 2015. The Evening Standard was named News Website of the Year in 2019.[10]

In 2011, he launched The Journalism Foundation, to promote "free and independent journalism throughout the world", although it was closed down after a year.[11]

The papers have been described as "progressive" in The New York Times.[12] In 2013, Amol Rajan became editor of The Independent, making him the second non-white editor of a national newspaper. Two of the other editors have been women: Sarah Sands preceding ex-Chancellor George Osborne at the Evening Standard, and Lisa Markwell of The Independent on Sunday. Some of the editors in Lebedev's newspaper group were unusually young; Rajan and the i editor, Oliver Duff, were both in their early thirties.

In February 2016, it was announced that Independent Press Ltd had reached an agreement to sell the i to Johnston Press, and that The Independent would become digital-only from March 2016.[13] In December 2019, Comscore, an American media analytics company, released figures that showed that The Independent had overtaken The Guardian in unique visitors for the previous month for the first time.[14] This made The Independent the largest quality digital media brand in the UK.

In 2019, it was reported that Lebedev sold a 30% stake in the publications to a private Saudi investor. After a second regulator concluded no investigation was necessary, Ofcom judged that the sale had not led to “any influence” on the news outlets controlled by the British-Russian businessman.[15][16][17]

International journalism

Lebedev travels widely as a journalist and has interviewed global leaders including Hamid Karzai, Ismail Haniyeh, Mikhail Gorbachev and Alexander Lukashenko.

In 2013, he interviewed the Ku Klux Klan at their Arkansas headquarters, while in 2014 he investigated the drug wars in Mexico.[18] In 2015, he visited Gabon, to write on the fate of the African forest elephant. These projects and others have produced a series of articles and broadcasts in Vanity Fair, the New Statesman, GQ, Vogue, The Guardian, the BBC and elsewhere.

Charity work

Lebedev is the patron of the Evening Standard's Dispossessed Fund, which helps to address poverty in London, and has raised over £13m since its launch in 2010.[19] Lebedev was the chairman of the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, which he founded with Mikhail Gorbachev in 2006, to help children with cancer.

Lebedev has spearheaded a number of campaigns and fundraising appeals run by the Evening Standard and The Independent, including the Homeless Veterans Campaign in 2014; the Space for Giants Elephant Campaign in 2013; and the Child Soldiers campaign in 2012. In 2015, the Great Ormond Street Christmas campaign raised more than £3.5 million, making it the most successful Christmas appeal in the history of The Independent.

Lebedev is a patron of Space for Giants, an international conservation charity. In 2015, he worked with Space for Giants to launch the Giants Club initiative, which unites leaders of African states and heads of businesses to save Africa's remaining elephant population. He has written widely on conservation and campaigned to close down live animal markets. In 2020, The Independent and Evening Standard launched a conservation campaign in partnership with Space for Giants, #StopIWT, to end the illegal international trade in wildlife parts.

In 2018, Lebedev launched #AIDSFree, a cross-title campaign between The Independent and Evening Standard to raise money for the Elton John AIDS Foundation. The campaign raised £3.26m for the cause.[20]

In 2019, Lebedev announced that both the Evening Standard and The Independent would launch a multiple-year campaign to tackle homelessness in London and around the world.[21][22] He also gave a private donation of £10,000 to The Sun's campaign to help a 98-year old WWII veteran who was beaten and robbed at his home in London.

Since the coronavirus lockdown began in the United Kingdom, Lebedev's news titles appealed in partnership with food surplus charity The Felix Project to supply food to vulnerable people, frontline charities and NHS hospitals.[23] As of July 10 2020, the #FoodForLondonNow campaign raised over £7.5m and delivered food for over 5 million meals.[24] The campaign was endorsed by the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, José Mourinho, Emma Watson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Stephen Fry, Eddie Izzard, Jack Whitehall and Olivia Coleman.[25][26][27][28][29][30]

Other business interests

Lebedev co-owns The Grapes, a riverside pub in Limehouse, London, with Sir Ian McKellen and Sean Mathias.[31]

Lebedev purchased the historic Château Gütsch in Lucerne, Switzerland in 2012, and he turned it into a luxury hotel-restaurant.[32]

Lebedev is chairman and host of the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. He also supports the Moscow Art Theatre.

Personal life

According to The Daily Telegraph, Lebedev previously dated British actress Joely Richardson.[33]

Lebedev collects modern British art, and owns pieces by Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Jake and Dinos Chapman.[34] According to the New Statesman, he also has a wide knowledge of Renaissance art and vorticist poetry. [35] He had a pet wolf called Boris, named after the former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.[36]

Lebedev and his father Alexander are known for holding lavish social events with guests ranging from celebrities like Mick Jagger, Eddie Izzard, Ian McKellen, Keira Knightley, Joan Collins and Ralph Fiennes to royalty Princess Eugenie and politicians like Sadiq Khan and Boris Johnson.[37]

References
  1. Woodcork, Andrew (31 July 2020). "The Independent's Evgeny Lebedev awarded peerage by PM". The Independent. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  2. Courea, Eleni; Maguire, Patrick; O'Neill, Sean (31 July 2020). "Evgeny Lebedev: Son of KGB agent handed a seat in the Lords". The Times. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  3. Sweney, Mark (8 January 2009). "Profile: Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 September 2010.
  4. Gray, Freddy (26 September 2015). "The strange world of Evgeny Lebedev". The Spectator. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  5. Aspden, Peter (20 November 2019). "Lunch with the FT: Evgeny Lebedev". Financial Times. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  6. Andrew Cave (2 July 2009). "Evgeny Lebedev spells out his vision for the Evening Standard". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  7. O'Carroll, Tristan. "DMGT confirms Standard to be sold to Lebedev". MediaWeek.
  8. Stephen Brook (15 January 2010). "ABCs: Free London Evening Standard breaks through 600,000 barrier". The Guardian.
  9. "Lebedev family buys Independent in deal to secure paper's future" Archived 27 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine, London Evening Standard website
  10. "Evening Standard website wins four Drum Online Media Awards". Evening Standard. 1 May 2019. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
  11. Greenslade, Roy (10 February 2012). "Journalism Foundation gets its first project off the ground". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
  12. Porter, Charlie (31 December 2014). "The Rise of Evgeny Lebedev". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  13. "The Independent will become the first national newspaper to go digital-only". The Independent. 12 February 2016. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  14. Twitter, Freddy Mayhew (23 December 2019). "Comscore: Independent overtakes Guardian for unique visitors in November". Press Gazette.
  15. "Government ends probe of Evening Standard stake sale". Financial Times. 16 September 2019. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  16. Twitter, Freddy Mayhew (16 September 2019). "Independent and Standard 'vindicated' by Ofcom report into Saudi investor deals, says owner". Press Gazette.
  17. "Ofcom report to DCMS LHM and IDNM - 21 August 2019". GOV.UK.
  18. Lebedev, Evgeny. "Tale of a city: See, hear, taste, touch". New Statesman. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  19. "Comic Relief gives the Evening Standard's Dispossessed Fund a £1m". London Evening Standard. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
  20. "Our Aids appeal has changed attitudes and helped challenge 30 years of stigma #AIDSfree". The Independent. 1 February 2019.
  21. "Join our campaign working towards a future where no one has to worry about where they will sleep tonight #TheHomelessFund". The Independent. 20 November 2019.
  22. Lebedev, Evgeny [@mrevgenylebedev] (20 November 2019). "London in 2019 is one of the world's greatest and most prosperous cities. Yet tens of thousands of people do not have a safe place to sleep tonight. I am proud to announce that the @EveningStandard and @Independent will launch a two year campaign on homelessness in London" (Tweet). Retrieved 1 August 2020 – via Twitter.
  23. "It's the challenge of our lifetime — let's unite to feed London". Evening Standard. 27 March 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  24. "Almost there! £7.5m to help feed the hungry". Evening Standard. 10 July 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  25. "Donations hit £1.5m in Standard appeal to feed vulnerable Londoners". Evening Standard. 14 April 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  26. "Celebs rally behind campaign to feed the vulnerable". Evening Standard. 10 April 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  27. "Celebrate — but don't undo your sacrifices with reckless behaviour". Evening Standard. 2 July 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  28. "Meghan backs Evening Standard appeal to feed hungry in London". Evening Standard. 17 April 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  29. "Jack Whitehall: Seeing Felix Project work revealed how vital it is". Evening Standard. 2 May 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  30. "Jose Mourinho digs in to help feed Londoners in our appeal". Evening Standard. 29 April 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  31. "The Grapes, Limehouse. Spanning 500 years of history". www.thegrapes.co.uk. Retrieved 5 April 2018.
  32. Doak, Alex (12 January 2015). "Chateau Gütsch: Journey to Lucerne, the ticking heart of watchmaking". City A.M. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  33. Williams, Sally (4 October 2015). "Joely Richardson interview: 'Work saved me from my grief'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  34. Sunyer, John (2 April 2015). "Evgeny Lebedev, Britain's youngest newspaper proprietor". Financial Times. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  35. Elmhirst, Sophie (1 July 2011). "Oligarch, reinvented". New Statesman. Retrieved 1 August 2020.
  36. Hatterstone, Simon (4 May 2012). "Evgeny Lebedev: Don't call me an oligarch". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
  37. https://magazine99.com/princesses-beatrice-and-eugenie-head-to-media-magnate-evgeny-lebedevs-christmas-birthday-party/%5B%5D
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