Family offices are ideally placed to power the next generation of British biotech and life sciences companies, according to Sir Leonard Blavatnik.
‘Family offices should invest,’ said Sir Leonard, speaking exclusively to Spear’s at Kensington Palace, the venue for a gala dinner where the winners of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom were announced last week.
‘My family office has different investment groups, one of them is life sciences, and we actively invest in this sector,’ said Sir Leonard, who has investments across natural resources, technology, media and other sectors through his family office Access Industries. ‘We’ve had very good results in life sciences in the UK; I would encourage other family offices to do the same.’
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Sir Leonard who was knighted in 2017 for services to philanthropy and has an estimated net worth of $32 billion, described the science clusters in Cambridge and Oxford as ‘really world class’, but added that they ‘should be developed further’.
‘A lot of innovation comes from here. I think the UK should be doing more to help. Usually, once [UK life sciences businesses] reach a certain level, they sell out. But the potential is fantastic.’
In a press release, the Blavatnik Family Foundation said that ‘support for scientists in the early stage of their careers will help to produce the technological advancements needed to overcome major challenges’.
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‘Philanthropy and family offices have a vital role in supporting early-stage biotech companies and higher education accelerators. Their willingness to invest in high-risk, high-reward opportunities can address key gaps in funding, help nurture groundbreaking scientific innovations and, ultimately, lead to advances that benefit society as a whole.’
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At the awards gala three scientists were each awarded £100,000 in unrestricted funds. The winner in the life sciences category was Prof. Christopher Stewart of Newcastle University, who leads a Newcastle laboratory developing approaches to prevent necrotising enterocolitis (NEC), the leading cause of death in preterm infants.
Sir Leonard was born in Odesa in 1957, then within the Ukrainian SSR, part of the Soviet Union, and was among those to profit from the privatisation of natural resources businesses following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Sir Leonard now has wide-ranging interests that include New York-headquartered Warner Music Group and investments in companies such as Snapchat, Alibaba and Spotify.
The idea to create the awards for young scientists was hatched when Sir Leonard attended a Nobel Prize ceremony in Sweden. ‘I was inspired to create something similar where they would receive recognition and financial support much earlier in their careers and have the potential to evolve into Nobel Prize-level scientists,’ he said.
In total, the scientists supported by the awards have founded 50 companies, six of which are now publicly traded. They have a collective valuation exceeding $12 billion and ‘Blavatnik Scholars’ have been granted over 7,300 patents. ‘That return makes me very proud,’ Sir Leonard said.
‘This approach reflects my broader investment philosophy — whether in business or science, success often comes from identifying exceptional talent and giving it the right support. Innovation doesn’t always require starting from scratch. Sometimes, the greatest opportunities are already there, just waiting to be unlocked.’
