Ryan Kavanaugh Net Worth: Earnings, Biography, Age, Height, Wife

Ryan Kavanaugh Net Worth: $50 Million (approx.)

Net Worth:$50 Million (approx.)
Date of Birth:Dec 4, 1974
Age:47 years
Profession:Film Producer
Nationality:United States of America

Ryan Kavanaugh net worth is around $50 million. Ryan Kavanaugh is a famous film producer, film financier.

Ryan Kavanaugh Net Worth
(Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic)

Ryan Kavanaugh is the founder and current CEO of the movie studio Relativity Media. Through Relativity, Ryan Kavanaugh has managed to finance over 200 movies, a feat that has equaled more than $17 billion in revenue. Relativity now has a TV division, as well as sports management and music departments.

Ryan Kavanaugh Biography:

Born1974 (age 47–48)
Los Angeles, California, US
EducationUniversity of California, Los Angeles
OccupationFilm financier
Known forCo-founder and former CEO of Relativity Media
Spouse(s)Britta Lazenga​​(m. 2011, divorced)​
Jessica Roffey ​(m. 2015)​
Children2

Ryan Kavanaugh was born Ryan Colin Kavanaugh on December 4, 1974 in Los Angeles, California.

Ryan Kavanaugh Biography
(Photo by Larry Busacca/VF15/Getty Images)

Ryan Kavanaugh was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California, where he was raised in the Brentwood neighborhood and attended Brentwood High School. Ryan Kavanaugh mother is a real estate broker and his father a dentist turned businessman, born in Germany.

Ryan Kavanaugh father changed his surname to “Kavanaugh” before his son’s birth. Kavanaugh began purchasing stock shares when he was 6 years old.

Ryan Kavanaugh Education:

Ryan Kavanaugh attended UC Santa Barbara and UCLA but dropped out in 1996.In 2012, Kavanaugh threatened The New Yorker with legal action for its reporting on him, including its report that he dropped out of university.

Ryan Kavanaugh claimed to have officially graduated from UCLA and to be enrolled in a PhD program at USC. The New Yorker stood by its reporting.While subsequent sources reported that Kavanaugh finished a degree in 2012,The Wall Street Journal reported that there was no record of him taking classes at USC

Ryan Kavanaugh Career:

After graduating, Ryan Kavanaugh founded a small venture capital firm, which financed and consulted many other small businesses.

Ryan Kavanaugh uncle connected the family with producer Jon Peters. Kavanaugh and his father leveraged Peters’ Hollywood connections to raise an estimated US$175 million in investment funds for the younger Kavanaugh’s company.

Ryan Kavanaugh brokered a $525 million revolving loan by Merrill Lynch to Marvel Entertainment and $264 million in co-financing by Wisconsin hedge fund Stark Investments for six Warner Bros. movies. For Kavanaugh’s first slate fund, Gun Hill 1, he raised $600 million through Deutsche Bank to co-finance 18 movies at Universal and Sony. Other slates followed.

Relativity was paid a fee of $1 million per film in each slate, and Ryan Kavanaugh shrewdly insisted that he receive an executive-producer credit for each of the dozens of films being financed, which gave Relativity the aura of a production company and Kavanaugh that of a producer. He nurtured this impression, referring to Sony’s The Social Network and Universal’s Atonement as “Relativity films.”

One of the first of these, 3:10 to Yuma, was well reviewed and a box-office hit when it opened in September 2007. A Variety article published  reported that Gun Hill 1’s investors would initially make a 13 percent internal rate of return, which would rise over the next five years to 18 percent. Kavanaugh was already prepared to be generous with his success.

At a Habitat for Humanity dinner that November, he revealed that he would donate $1 million and become chair of the organization’s fund-raising campaign.

Ryan Kavanaugh proved effective at raising money to launch his own studio as he was at financing other studios’ movies. In fact, Ryan landed as sophisticated an investor as anyone could imagine: Elliott Management, the hedge fund founded by Paul Singer, one of the Republican Party’s largest donors.

Elliott had already taken a small position in Gun Hill 1, and a senior director at the firm, Chuck MacDonald, was impressed by Ryan Kavanaugh business model — in particular, the fees it took regardless of how the underlying assets performed.

Elliott knew that Kavanaugh wanted to build out his own studio, but the firm was reassured that his proprietary methodology and risk-hedging model would ensure that the company delivered a steady stream of “singles and doubles.”

In the early 2000s, when investors began asking for their money, Ryan Kavanaugh became difficult to reach. Several investors, including Peters, sued Kavanaugh alleging fraud, and the suits were settled out of court.

Michael Sitrick, an executive and Ryan Kavanaugh family friend, also sued, alleging Kavanaugh violated terms of their agreement and placed most of Sitrick’s $6 million investment into a type of Ponzi scheme at a company where Kavanaugh sat on the board.

An arbitrator found that Ryan Kavanaugh was “clearly negligent”, and Sitrick won a $7.7 million arbitration judgment against Kavanaugh. He never received payment because Kavanaugh successfully argued that he was virtually penniless and his business on the verge of bankruptcy at the time of the judgment.

In 2008, Ryan Kavanaugh launched Relativity Media with an investment partner, Ron Burkle. The company aimed to bridge the worlds if finance and film. He created a model designed to predict the success and profitability of any given film.

Relativity Media and Kavanaugh’s model were the backbone for the success of the financing and launching of the 2008 “Iron Man”. All of the films produced by Relativity Media must prove positive with their financial model before being released and his effective model has become a standard in finance across many industries.

Ryan Kavanaugh has been recognized for his many successes in the film industry, notably the 2009 Hollywood Producer of the Year Award at the Annual Hollywood Awards Gala. In 2011, he was named “Showman of the Year” by the Variety magazine. He was also listed #19 on Forbes’ 2013 youngest billionaires.

In November 2011, when Relativity Media was desperately short on funds, investor Ron Burkle arranged a series of loans to Ryan Kavanaugh company in exchange for interest.Industry speculation surfaced that Burkle would oust Kavanaugh from Relativity Media in favor of his friend Harvey Weinstein, but Burkle and Weinstein both disclaimed the scenario.

Relativity Media executives became increasingly doubtful as the company’s financial health declined and Kavanaugh’s valuations kept increasing.

Ryan Kavanaugh claimed dubious valuations and presented “adjusted” EBITDA numbers to investors, which included projections based on films the company had relinquished to Elliott Management.

In June 2015, lenders began requiring Kavanaugh to receive approval before making any transactions. In July 2015, Relativity Media filed for bankruptcy. As a result, Netflix sought to end a distribution deal with Relativity Media, and Kavanaugh responded by sending threatening emails to Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix.

Ryan Kavanaugh Interesting Facts:

But, Ryan Kavanaugh interests extend beyond film industry, he is an avid philanthropist, and an activist. Recently, he acquired a premium dog food manufacturer, FreeHand, well known for rescuing homeless dogs. He is quoted for saying, “We hope this will become a staple of Hollywood, and if you are not involved in this, then you’re not promoting social good amongst the animal world.”

Ryan Kavanaugh Awards & Recognitions:

Ryan Kavanaugh is an active humanitarian, and he intends to incorporate FreeHand into the mission of Relativity Media to increase the awareness of dog rescue.

For his stance, Kavanaugh has been commended by many organizations, including the Cedars-Sinal Medical Center as the winner of the 2010 Hollywood Humanitarian Award. Ryan Kavanaugh was also awarded the 2011 Entertainment Industry Award by the Anti-Defamation League for his commitment against Antisemitism.