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Billionaire Leonard Blavatnik, owner of Warner Music, is one of the most generous tycoons out there. The Daily mail reported that last week, in St Tropez, Blavatnik donated $6 million to Leonardo DiCaprio’s conservation foundation, bidding for a sculpture of a unicorn by Damien Hirst.
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The Ukrainian-born businessman, born in Odessa in 1957 to a Russian-speaking Jewish family, is worth $21 billion.
The statue, Golden Myth, was the highest-selling lot of the evening.
Last may, Blavatnik spent $15 on another Hirst piece, a 10 foot-tall, gold-plated mammoth skeleton, auctioned at the annual AmfAR Charity Gala at the Cannes Film Festival.
Back then, Blavatnik joked about his costly purchase, saying: “I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with it. It was unexpected.”
According to the Daily mail, last November, Blavatnik spent $20 million on a private jet that flew his daughters and her friends to a charity ball hosted by J.K. Rowling.
“The event was held at the UK’s Warner Studios and Len thought it would be nice for his daughters to go. He is no stranger to big gestures, ” a source told the paper.
Blavatnik, who couldn’t complete his studies at Moscow State University of Railway Engineering because his family requested an immigration visa, in 2010 donated $127 million to Oxford University to establish a new school of government.
The Blavatnik Family Foundation is supporting many cultural and philanthropic institutions, including the British Museum, Tate Modern, Royal Opera House, National Portrait Gallery and Museum of Modern Art.
The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists recognize the accomplishments of outstanding young scientists in life sciences, physical sciences and engineering and provides all finalists with a significant cash prize.
Blavatnik sponsors a Colel Chabad 20, 000-square-foot food bank and warehouse in Kiryat Malakhi, Israel, which sends monthly food shipments to 5, 000 poor families in 25 Israeli cities, and before Jewish holidays to 30, 000 families in 73 Israeli cities, towns and villages.
