Oil and metals magnate Viktor Vekselberg set aside business Thursday night to raise funds for, of all things, a California state park. The Russian billionaire told attendees at a black tie event at San Francisco’s elegant City Hall rotunda that the park, Fort Ross, holds a special place in his heart because it was established by Russians as a settlement 200 years ago -- the first European settlement on the West Coast. Vekselberg is on a mission to, as he said, “breathe a second life” into the park.
Tickets for the fundraiser started at $2,500. About 150 guests attended, dining on chilled sweet yellow beet borscht and roasted loin of venison.
Vekselberg singled out support from Donald Kendall, the former CEO of Pepsico, who first brought Pepsi to Russia and attended the event. Vekselberg also cited in absentia his fellow Russian billionaire Len Blavatnik, “my friend and business partner, who is also a big supporter and active participant in carrying out many U.S.-Russian projects.” The Blavatnik Family Foundation has been the vehicle to support the efforts at Fort Ross.
Vekselberg built a fortune buying aluminum smelters and later acquired a 12.5% stake in Russian oil and gas giant TNK-BP. He ranked 64th on Forbes’ 2012 list of the World’s Billionaires in March, with an estimated net worth of $12.4 billion. Vekselberg established the Renova Fort Ross Foundation in the U.S. in 2010 to support Fort Ross, which is a state historic park. Last year the foundation donated $1 million to the park and in total has committed $1.7 million for rehabilitation and outreach. Some of the funds have gone to help promote the bicentennial celebration of the park this year, said State Park Superintendent Liz Burko. Vekselberg’s participation “has created a renewed interest for people in California and in Russia in Fort Ross,” said Burko, who recently returned from a privately-funded trip to Russia with members of the Kashaya people, whose ancestors lived where Fort Ross was established and intermarried with the Russian settlers.
The gala at city hall featured speeches by Vekselberg, Senator Dianne Feinstein - who sat next to Vekselberg at dinner and told the crowd that she was half Russian: her mother was born in St. Petersburg - and Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, and messages from Russian President Vladimir Putin (read by Sergei Kislyak, Russian Ambassador the U.S.) and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (read by former U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle). A video of the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra playing a Tchaikovsky symphony – overlaid with stunning images of the Fort Ross park -- and performances by members of the Bolshoi Theater Opera gave the evening a distinctive Russian feel.
Guests at the event included former Citigroup Chairman and CEO John Reed, who now serves as Chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and VMware cofounder and former CEO Diane Greene, an MIT trustee. In April, the Skolkovo Foundation, chaired by Vekselberg, announced that it was collaborating with MIT on the creation of a new science and technology graduate university outside Moscow called SK Tech. Vekselberg approached MIT about the university, which will be located within a new science and technology development center – a Russian Silicon Valley – in Skolkovo, a Moscow suburb. “We are starting with 30 students and it will grow … to 1,000,” Vekselberg told FORBES.
Earlier Thursday in a ceremony at Fort Ross, which is on the coastline about 90 miles north of San Francisco, Vekselberg unveiled a windmill that was built by one of his companies in Russia and re-assembled on site. The windmill was based on blueprints from one like it built by Russian settlers at Fort Ross nearly 200 years ago.
All this activity in San Francisco and environs took place at a time when the fate of Vekselberg’s most valuable investment, oil and gas company TNK-BP, is being decided. Russian oil giant Rosneft has offered to buy not only BP’s 50% stake in TNK-BP, but also the remaining 50% stake owned by four Russian tycoons, including Vekselberg and Blavatnik. Rosneft is reported to have offered $28 billion for the Russian tycoons’ 50% stake. For more on those developments, see this post from my colleague Chris Helman.
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