Cover Story

Oiling up to the oligarchs

8 October 2005

Dominic Midgley on how Britain’s service industries are busy separating London’s free-spending New Russians from their cash

Hand in hand with these courtroom battles over cash and reputation go more public campaigns in the media. Abramovich once told Le Monde that the difference between a rat and a hamster was PR, and so the oligarchs are all big spenders on spin doctors. The daddy of them all, Lady Thatcher’s former communications director Lord Bell, acts for Berezovsky. Abramovich himself used Citigate Dewe Rogerson during the takeover of Chelsea in July 2003, but has subsequently relied on in-house spokesmen — the ubiquitous John Mann in Moscow and the former Evening Standard sports editor Simon Greenberg at Chelsea. Oleg Deripaska, the multibillionaire owner of RusAl, Russia’s biggest aluminium manufacturer, uses the City PR outfit Finsbury, while Mikhail Friedman retains the London end of US lobbyists Apco.

Among the society figures who have met Abramovich are the Marquess of Reading, who was introduced to him by Berezovsky in the south of France, and Jacob Rothschild and his son Nat, who run JNR, a financial services company that advises businesses on the Russian market.

In addition to his links to British society, there are signs that Abramovich intends to acquire some expertise in appropriate sporting pursuits. When an oligarch wants to reach for a gun, he heads for Holland and Holland, purveyors of shotguns and tweed plus-fours to the gentry and the nouveaux riches, and Abramovich has been spotted there. He has also taken an interest in polo and once hired Alan Kent, captain of the English polo team, to tutor him. He appears to have given up, however, after realising that the time delay involved in having an interpreter translate Kent’s shouted instructions made the whole enterprise something of a farce.