Access Industries
Access Industries, Inc. is a British-American privately held multinational industrial group. It was founded in 1986 by businessman Leonard "Len" Blavatnik, who is also its chairman. Access's industrial focus is in four areas: natural resources and chemicals, media and telecommunications, venture capital and real estate. The group invests in the United States, Europe, Israel, and Latin America. It is headquartered in New York and London with additional offices in Moscow. History Len Blavatnik founded Access Industries in 1986 as an investment company. He attended Harvard Business School while running the company on the side, graduating with an MBA in 1989. Among its early investments, Access Industries helped form the large aluminum producer SUAL in 1996, which later became part of UC RUSAL. In 1997, Access acquired a 40% stake in the Russian oil company TNK. Half of TNK was sold to British Petroleum (BP) to form TNK-BP in 2003, in what was the largest-ever foreign investment in a Russian company. In 2013, Rosneft acquired TNK-BP for $55 billion, with Access Industries selling its stake and Blavatnik collecting US$7 billion for his share of the oil venture. Access purchased a large stake in the fashion label Tory Burch in 2004. In