Badri Patarkatsishvili’s family set up a firm to manage his multibillion-dollar fortune after the mustachioed Georgian tycoon died suddenly at his English mansion in 2008.
As his heirs fended off opportunists seeking a slice of the billionaire’s assets, the money manager kept a low profile, offering few details of how it handled the wealth he amassed alongside fellow oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That’s starting to change.
The Patarkatsishvilis’ family office, Bili Capital, has revealed more than two dozen bets on funds from some of the biggest names in global finance, including BlackRock Inc. and Ares Management Corp., on a recently launched website.
Patarkatsishvili’s 70-year-old widow, Inna, the de facto head of the family after his death, also ceded her stake in the firm within the past year, registry filings show. That move coincides with the resolution of a long-running legal battle over the fortune of Georgia’s one-time richest man, and has separately led to Inna’s son-in-law, Yevhen Hunyak, 51, becoming Bili Capital’s only shareholder. As a result, a second-generation member is now in sole control of one of London’s biggest — and historically most discreet — family offices for the first time.
A representative for the Patarkatsishvili dynasty, who describe Bili Capital as a multi-generational family office overseeing more than $1 billion in assets, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The disclosures give rare insight into one of the biggest fortunes to emerge from Russia’s so-called “wild ‘90s” as the country transitioned from communism to a market-based economy. They also make the once-secretive Bili Capital more transparent than many other family offices, whose public profiles often comprise a single-page website with little information. At least one-fifth of individuals among the world’s 500 biggest fortunes now have a family office that help to oversee wealth totaling more than $4 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Bili Capital’s “transparency on what they’re doing makes them much more accessible, and relatable, to the outside world,” said David Hawkins, founder of Cliveden Advisory, a strategic consulting and reputation-management firm for ultra-wealthy individuals. “They likely want to do more deals.”
Bili Capital’s other fund allocations include Silicon Valley venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, index-fund pioneer Vanguard and Mubadala-backed Fortress Investment Group. It also oversees direct stakes in a Georgia theme park, a mineral-water company and a real estate developer serving Miami’s Fisher Island enclave for the ultra-wealthy.
Patarkatsishvili began to build his fortune in the early 1990s when he teamed up with Berezovsky, one of the most influential oligarchs of that decade, to run car dealership LogoVaz. The pair later partnered with Abramovich to help establish Russian oil giant Sibneft out of state-owned assets, with Berezovsky leveraging his Kremlin connections and Patarkatsishvili keeping business relations running smoothly behind the scenes.
“Berezovsky was the public face of their alliance, while Badri was the muscle,” said David Lingelbach, who headed Bank of America Corp.’s Russian operations during the 1990s and is now a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Baltimore. “He’s such an interesting oligarch as everything about him was so opaque. He was one of the most powerful — if not the most powerful – person in Georgia.”
In 2001, Abramovich acquired the Sibneft stakes owned by Patarkatsishvili and Berezovsky for more than $1 billion after their relationship with the Kremlin soured. Berezovsky later tried unsuccessfully to sue Abramovich over that deal in one of London’s most high-profile legal battles, before he was found dead at his own English mansion in 2013. Abramovich is worth $7.8 billion today, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index.
Bili Capital’s revamp comes after years of battles over the patriarch’s assets have receded, freeing his heirs to focus on what’s left of the fortune.
Since his death, the family has been entangled in several cases, including a $3 billion claim in 2008 by Berezovsky, who alleged that a portion of his former business partner’s holdings — often stashed in secretive tax havens — rightfully belonged to him. Berezovsky withdrew his claim four years later, while the family also successfully fended off a distant relative positioning themselves as Patarkatsishvili’s heir. Another case dating to 2016 wrapped up this year at the UK’s highest court.
By some estimates, the family has recovered at least $2 billion of Patarkatsishvili’s assets, though that’s just a fraction of what his overall wealth was believed to be at the time of his death.
Founded in December 2008, Bili Capital is led by Chief Executive Officer Sergey Ershikov and Chief Financial Officer Ilia Demidov, who both previously worked at Russian lender Alfa-Bank.
Like other family offices, the closely held firm isn’t regulated as it doesn’t manage money for external investors, limiting transparency requirements. Allocating to funds instead of striking deals under its own name also allows it to keep a low profile, while its longtime holding entity is in Jersey, a low-tax territory neighboring the UK that offers exemptions from publicly disclosing consolidated accounts.
A 2022 job posting for Bili Capital cited further assets including a yacht, a fleet of vehicles and several European homes, underscoring how the firm caters to both the financial affairs and jet-setting lifestyle of its owners. The online post also described the firm developing a “branding” strategy, signaling how it has been considering its public image for years.
“Reputational capital is important,” said Hawkins, who also advises family offices. “It’s a necessary form of insurance.”
In a section entitled “Meet our family,” Bili Capital’s website features a black-and-white image of Inna accompanied in a countryside setting by her two daughters: Liana, 45, the founder of an arts production company, and Iya, 42, a human rights activist.
Iya’s husband Hunyak, the co-founder of a private children’s dental group and Bili Capital’s sole shareholder since September, stands to the right of the three women with a small gap between them. The group are all smiling, with no trace of their past traumas.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
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