Britain's youngest media magnate has only just begun to talk when he gets distracted by his own fingers, and breaks off to sniff them. Inhaling delicately, he smiles to himself, and explains that he keeps a private library of 500 scented oils in an office, which he had been checking on before I arrived. "Professional perfumers tell me I've got a good nose, which I'm very proud about. I think smell is one of the most powerful things in the world. It's like a time machine. Most people don't realise that. If I smell lilacs, for example, I'm immediately transported back to my childhood, because there are a lot of lilacs in Russia."
I've never met a newspaper proprietor before, so for all I know this could be par for the course, but I doubt it. I was expecting Evgeny Lebedev to be like a businessman. In 2009 he bought the Evening Standard for £1, when circulation had slumped below 250,000 and the paper was losing money. Today it is distributed for free to 900,000 Londoners, and last year began turning a profit. The Independent was losing £20m when Lebedev bought it in 2010 – but having launched a hugely successful cheaper sister title, i, today he can claim combined daily sales of almost 400,000, which have reduced annual losses to nearer £5m. So obviously he must be a serious businessman.
But he's not a conventional capitalist, because when I ask if he couldn't have found a more lucrative way to invest £100m, he agrees. "There are certainly more profitable things. Definitely. But I can't honestly think of anything that could be more fun," he says. He's not an obviously political animal, either. His father, Alexander, is a former KGB spy turned billionaire oligarch and high-profile critic of Vladimir Putin's regime, but the 34-year-old is cagey on Kremlin politics. And although there has been talk of him running for mayor of London, he tells me: "To be honest with you, I find British politics quite boring." In fact, he is so unlike any recognisable professional type that the best way to think of Lebedev is probably as a character from an Evelyn Waugh novel. » | Decca Aitkenhead | Saturday, March 14, 2014
The strange world of Evgeny Lebedev »
Related.
Boris Johnson denies overruling spies’ concerns over Evgeny Lebedev peerage: PM says he did not intervene to get Russian-British newspaper owner into Lords after security risk warning »
Evgeny Lebedev: Don't call me an oligarch: Evgeny Lebedev is a Russian billionaire. As a child, he wanted to be a cosmonaut 'like all good Soviet children'. Today he owns a couple of British newspaper titles, dates glamorous women and has a pet wolf called Boris. But he's no ordinary playboy »
EVGENY LEBEDEV WROTE THIS IN THE 'EVENING STANDARD’ ON FEBRUARY 28TH APROPOS OF THE WAR:
President Putin, please stop this war: A personal plea to the Russian leader from Evening Standard proprietor Evgeny Lebedev »
