Evgeny Lebedev
Get Evgeny Lebedev essential facts below. View Videos or join the Evgeny Lebedev discussion. Add Evgeny Lebedev to your PopFlock.com topic list for future reference or share this resource on social media.
Evgeny Lebedev

The Right Honourable

The Lord Lebedev
Evgeny-Lebedev-1-GQ-2sep13 rex b 320x480 1.jpg
Lebedev in 2013
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal

17 December 2020
Life Peerage
Personal details
Born
Evgeny Alexandrovich Lebedev

(1980-05-08) 8 May 1980 (age 40)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Russia)
NationalityRussian, British
ParentsAlexander Lebedev
Natalia Sokolova
RelativesVladimir Sokolov (grandfather)
ResidenceLondon, England
EducationHolland Park School
Mill Hill School

Evgeny Alexandrovich Lebedev, Baron Lebedev[1] (Russian: ? ? ?, tr. Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Lebedev[a], pronounced [v'en? 'l?ebdf]; born 8 May 1980) is a Russian-British businessman, who owns Lebedev Holdings Ltd, which owns the Evening Standard, The Independent and the TV channel London Live.

In July 2020, Lebedev was nominated for a life peerage by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a move that drew criticism.[3][4] Lebedev has sat in the House of Lords as a crossbench life peer since 19 November 2020.[5] Lebedev was supported at his House of Lords introduction ceremony by Kenneth Clarke and Baron Bird.[6]

Early life and education

Born in Moscow, Lebedev is the son of Alexander Lebedev, a Russian banker and former officer of the First Chief Directorate of the USSR's KGB and later its successor, the SVR, and his first wife Natalia Sokolova. He moved to London at the age of eight, when his father began working at the KGB rezidentura in the Soviet Embassy.

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.[7][8]

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 his father bought a 65% share in the Evening Standard newspaper.[9] The previous owners, Daily Mail and General Trust plc, continue to hold 24.9% of the company.[10] Under the Lebedevs' ownership, it became a free newspaper in October 2009; circulation tripled immediately to 700,000.[11]

On 25 March 2010, just weeks before it was due to close, Lebedev bought The Independent and The Independent on Sunday. On 26 October, 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.[12] In 2011, he launched The Journalism Foundation, to promote "free and independent journalism throughout the world", although it was closed down after a year.[13]

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.[14] 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]

Other business interests, real estate, and political influence

Lebedev co-owns The Grapes, a riverside pub in Limehouse, London, with Sir Ian McKellen and Sean Mathias,[17] and he purchased the Château Gütsch in Lucerne, Switzerland in 2012, before turning it into a luxury hotel-restaurant.[18]

He has been reported to own a flat in central London near Regent's Park as well as the Grade II-listed mansion Stud House in the grounds of Hampton Court Palace, and two large properties within 11 miles of each other, in the Umbrian countryside, Italy.[19][20]

He had maintained close friendship with Boris Johnson since the late 2000s,[21] with Lebedev's Evening Standard going all out in support of Johnson as the Mayor of London.[19] Johnson has been reported to have attended vodka and caviar parties hosted by Alexander and Evgeny Lebedevs at different locations in the UK as well as in Italy multiple times throughout the 2010s.[21] Their relationship caused concern in the UK's security circles who assessed both Johnson and Lebedev as security risks.[19] According to a media report, that evaluation of Lebedev changed in June 2020, the decision allegedly having been made by Cabinet Office officials .[22]

In July 2020, he was nominated for peerage by prime minister Johnson,[23]The Guardian calling his "a surprise name among the 36 life peerage nominations which have led to accusations of 'cronyism' against the prime minister",[24] and Mark Galeotti opining the move indicated Johnson's eagerness "to show contempt for Britain's intelligence agencies."[25] Lebedev has sat in the House of Lords as a crossbench life peer since 19 November 2020[5] with the title Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation.[26] In Russia, his title has also been perceived as an obvious musical-theatre-inspired reference to the memory of the late "Siberian baritone" Dmitri Hvorostovsky who "had been called like that in the West because of some gloomy depth in his voice".[27]

Charity work

Lebedev is the patron of the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund, which helps to address poverty in London, and has raised over £13m since its launch in 2010.[28] In 2018, he launched #AIDSFree, a cross-title campaign between The Independent and Evening Standard to raise money for the Elton John AIDS Foundation.[29] In 2019, he announced that both newspapers' would launch a multiple-year campaign to tackle homelessness in London and around the world.[30]

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.[31][32] In December 2020, the 'Food for London Now' appeal announced that it had surpassed its £10 million target and delivered 20 million meals.[33]

Personal life

According to The Daily Telegraph, Lebedev previously dated British actress Joely Richardson.[34] While he does not confirm rumours about his homosexuality, which earnt him the nickname Two Beards coined by Private Eye, he is said not to mind people thinking so, according to media reports.[8]

Lebedev collects modern British art, and owns pieces by Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Jake and Dinos Chapman.[35] According to the New Statesman, he also has a wide knowledge of Renaissance art and vorticist poetry.[36] He had a pet wolf called Boris, named after the former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.[37]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The BGN/PCGN transliteration of Russian is used for his name here. ALA-LC system: Evgeni? Aleksandrovich Lebedev, ISO 9 system: Evgenij Aleksandrovi? Lebedev.[2]Latin: Eugenius Alexandri filius Lebedev

References

  1. ^ "Titled". The Daily Telegraph. 19 December 2020.
  2. ^ "Russian - BGN/PCGN transliteration system". transliteration.com. Retrieved 2020.
  3. ^ Woodcork, Andrew (31 July 2020). "The Independent's Evgeny Lebedev awarded peerage by PM". The Independent. Retrieved 2020.
  4. ^ 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 2020.
  5. ^ a b "Contact information for Lord Lebedev". Parliament of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 2020.
  6. ^ "Quentin Letts: Timeless Gove keeps calm and carries on charming". The Times. 18 December 2020. Retrieved 2021.
  7. ^ Aspden, Peter (20 November 2019). "Lunch with the FT: Evgeny Lebedev". Financial Times. Retrieved 2020.
  8. ^ a b Freddy Gray (26 September 2015). "The strange world of Evgeny Lebedev". The Spectator.
  9. ^ Andrew Cave (2 July 2009). "Evgeny Lebedev spells out his vision for the Evening Standard". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2020.
  10. ^ O'Carroll, Tristan. "DMGT confirms Standard to be sold to Lebedev". MediaWeek.
  11. ^ Stephen Brook (15 January 2010). "ABCs: Free London Evening Standard breaks through 600,000 barrier". The Guardian.
  12. ^ "Lebedev family buys Independent in deal to secure paper's future" Archived 27 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine, London Evening Standard website
  13. ^ Greenslade, Roy (10 February 2012). "Journalism Foundation gets its first project off the ground". The Guardian. Retrieved 2016.
  14. ^ "The Independent will become the first national newspaper to go digital-only". The Independent. 12 February 2016. Retrieved 2019.
  15. ^ "Government ends probe of Evening Standard stake sale". Financial Times. 16 September 2019. Retrieved 2020.
  16. ^ Mayhew, Freddy (16 September 2019). "Independent and Standard 'vindicated' by Ofcom report into Saudi investor deals, says owner". Press Gazette.
  17. ^ "The Grapes, Limehouse. Spanning 500 years of history". thegrapes.co.uk. Retrieved 2018.
  18. ^ Doak, Alex (12 January 2015). "Chateau Gütsch: Journey to Lucerne, the ticking heart of watchmaking". City A.M. Retrieved 2018.
  19. ^ a b c Otto English (25 October 2019). "Spooking the Spooks: Media Complicity and Security Concerns over Lebedev and Johnson". Byline Times.
  20. ^ Anne Applebaum (8 March 2013). "In From the Cold". The New York Times.
  21. ^ a b Harding, Luke; Sabbagh, Dan (21 October 2020). "Boris Johnson and Evgeny Lebedev: a decade of politics, parties and peerages". The Guardian. Retrieved 2020.
  22. ^ Sweeney, John (20 August 2020). "What Changed To Make Evgeny Lebedev No Longer a Security Risk?". Byline Times. Retrieved 2020.
  23. ^ Waterson, Jim (31 July 2020). "Johnson peerage for Lebedev crowns mutually beneficial friendship". The Guardian. Retrieved 2020.
  24. ^ Applebaum, Anne (31 July 2020). "Evgeny Lebedev, Jo Johnson and Ian Botham among 36 peerage nominations". The Guardian. Retrieved 2020.
  25. ^ Galeotti, Mark (4 August 2020). "Lebedev's Peerage Highlights London's Need to Address Russian Influence". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2020.
  26. ^ "Crown Office | The Gazette | Notice". The London Gazette. 23 November 2020. Retrieved 2020.
  27. ^ "" " ? ?" ["Baron of the GULAG": social networks on the new aristocrat of Russian origin]. svoboda.org (in Russian). Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 25 November 2020. Retrieved 2020. his offspring will sit here in the House of Lords under the name of some operetta baron of Siberia
    • "? ? " [Hvorostovsky and other baritones]. kultspargalka.ru (in Russian). 1 December 2019. Retrieved 2020. In the West, he was often called the "Siberian baritone" in much the same way as Chaliapin's bass has always been associated with Russia. There was some gloomy depth in his voice
  28. ^ "Comic Relief gives the Evening Standard's Dispossessed Fund a £1m". London Evening Standard. Retrieved 2016.
  29. ^ "Our Aids appeal has changed attitudes and helped challenge 30 years of stigma #AIDSfree". The Independent. 1 February 2019.
  30. ^ "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.
  31. ^ "It's the challenge of our lifetime -- let's unite to feed London". Evening Standard. 27 March 2020. Retrieved 2020.
  32. ^ "Almost there! £7.5m to help feed the hungry". Evening Standard. 10 July 2020. Retrieved 2020.
  33. ^ "The Food for London Now appeal has raised £10m and delivered 20m meals: Thank You London". Evening Standard. 18 December 2020. Retrieved 2021.
  34. ^ Williams, Sally (4 October 2015). "Joely Richardson interview: 'Work saved me from my grief'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2020.
  35. ^ Sunyer, John (2 April 2015). "Evgeny Lebedev, Britain's youngest newspaper proprietor". Financial Times. Retrieved 2020.
  36. ^ Elmhirst, Sophie (1 July 2011). "Oligarch, reinvented". New Statesman. Retrieved 2020.
  37. ^ Hatterstone, Simon (4 May 2012). "Evgeny Lebedev: Don't call me an oligarch". The Guardian. Retrieved 2016.

External links

Orders of precedence in the United Kingdom
Preceded by
The Lord Stewart of Dirleton 		Gentlemen
Baron Lebedev 		Followed by
The Lord Etherton

  This article uses material from the Wikipedia page available here. It is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

Evgeny_Lebedev
 



 



Popular Products
 
Music Scenes
Popular Artists