What is Ryan Kavanaugh's Net Worth and Salary?
Ryan Kavanaugh is an American film financier who has a net worth of $50 million. Ryan Kavanaugh co-founded and served as the CEO of the ill-fated media company Relativity Media. With the company, he brokered deals between Wall Street investors and major film studios, and pioneered a risk-assessment algorithm that ultimately failed.
At the peak of Relativity's success Ryan was a billionaire on paper before his 40th birthday. His net worth topped $1.6 billion in 2014. At the time Relativity was angling to go public in 2016. Unfortunately instead of going public in 2016, the company declared bankruptcy after missing loan payments, and various lawsuits. Kavanaugh stepped down that year as well. He then founded the film production company Proxima Media.
Real Estate
At his peak in 2015, Ryan owned at least $25 million worth of real estate. Perhaps helping along the way was the fact that his mother Leslie is a real estate agent. At one point Ryan owned homes in Malibu, Santa Monica, Brentwood, Westlake Village, New York City, Maui and the Pacific Palisades… at the same time. He was once described as one of the largest property owners on Maui.
In 2009 Ryan paid $7 million for a beachfront home in Malibu. The sellers were attorney Tom Girardi and his "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills"… housewife, Erika Jayne. He sold this home in 2015 for $8.75 million.
In 2011 he bought Dennis Quaid's equestrian estate in LA's Pacific Palisades neighborhood for $9.5 million. He sold it less than a year later for $11 million.
In 2013 he bought Howie Mandel's Malibu home for $7 million.
In August 2016, amidst his company's bankruptcy, Ryan paid a little under $10 million for a mansion in LA's Brentwood neighborhood. He sold this home in October 2017 for $9.3 million.
Early Life and Education
Ryan Kavanaugh was born on December 4, 1974 in Los Angeles, California into a Jewish family. His father was born in Germany. Raised in the affluent Brentwood neighborhood of LA, Kavanaugh began purchasing stock shares when he was just six years of age. As a teenager, he attended Brentwood High School. Kavanaugh went on to attend the University of California, Santa Barbara and UCLA, but dropped out in 1996.
Career Beginnings
After dropping out of college, Kavanaugh established a venture capital firm. Thanks to his uncle, he was able to get in touch with film producer Jon Peters, who helped raise around $175 million in investment funds for the firm. However, Peters and several of his investor friends subsequently sued Kavanaugh for fraud, alleging that Kavanaugh violated the terms of their agreement and placed most of investor Michael Sitrick's $6 million investment into a Ponzi scheme at a different company. An arbitrator determined that Kavanaugh was negligent, and awarded Sitrick $7.7 million; however, Kavanaugh never paid him because his business was on the verge of bankruptcy at the time.
Relativity Media
In 2004, Kavanaugh co-founded the independent media company Relativity Media with Lynwood Spinks. Through the company, he brokered deals between Wall Street investors and such major film studios as Universal and Sony, earning fees of $500,000 to $1 million per film. Additionally, Kavanaugh created a Monte Carlo-based model that predicted the probability of different films' commercial success. However, executives at Relativity frequently disagreed with Kavanaugh's valuation estimations, which were often inflated by combining third-party investment deals with optimistic projections. By the early 2010s, Relativity's box-office flops were eclipsing its commercial hits in number.
Kavanaugh had producing and executive producing credits on numerous films at Relativity. His producing credits included "Dear John," "The Fighter," "Immortals," "Mirror Mirror," "Beyond the Lights," and "Earth to Echo." Meanwhile, he was credited as an executive producer on such films as "3:10 to Yuma," "The Bank Job," "Little Fockers," "The Wolfman," "Oculus," and "The Space Between Us."
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Relativity Bankruptcy
In 2011, with Relativity short on funds, investor Ron Burkle made a series of loans to Kavanaugh's company in exchange for interest. Meanwhile, executives at Relativity grew increasingly skeptical of Kavanaugh. In 2015, lenders started requiring Kavanaugh to earn approval before making any transactions. Shortly after that, Relativity filed for bankruptcy. One of the company's lenders, RKA Film Financing, went on to sue the company for misappropriating marketing funds. At the end of 2016, Kavanaugh stepped down as the CEO of Relativity. The company would file for bankruptcy again in 2018.
Post-bankruptcy
In 2018, the United States Trustee's office posited that Relativity's bankruptcy seemed to benefit Kavanaugh and the new buyer, UltraV Holdings, at the expense of Relativity's creditors. It was found that he had paid himself $2.6 million in mid-2016 while his company failed to pay bankruptcy fees or file tax returns. Moreover, an arbitration case found that Relativity executives had fabricated a memo accusing the company's former co-president Adam Fields of sexual harassment. The falsified memo had been submitted to court two weeks before Fields's wrongful termination suit against Kavanaugh was to be tried. In that suit, Fields alleged that Kavanaugh misrepresented Relativity's financial prospects and used Relativity office space to produce pornography without Fields's consent. An arbitration judge in Los Angeles awarded Fields $8.4 million in damages and determined that Kavanaugh was one of the people who forged the fake sexual harassment memo.
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Proxima Media and Entertainment Stock X
After leaving Relativity, Kavanaugh founded Proxima Media in 2017. A couple years later, following his unsuccessful attempt to acquire the online stock trading game Hollywood Stock Exchange, he decided to create his own film properties trading exchange. Kavanaugh went on to launch that exchange, called Entertainment Stock X, with Elon Spar. However, just months later, Spar filed a lawsuit against Kavanaugh for fraud, alleging that Kavanaugh pushed him to go into business under false pretenses, misrepresented his finances, and was running a Ponzi scheme. The two ultimately settled out of court, and then withdrew their complaints before the court filing process was finished.
Failure Podcast
In early 2024, Kavanaugh began the Failure Podcast, on which he tells of his many personal and professional failures and interviews guests about their own failures. His first guest on the podcast was television and film director and producer Nigel Lythgoe.
Personal Life
In 2011, Kavanaugh married ballet dancer Britta Lazenga. They eventually divorced. He went on to wed model Jessica Roffey in 2015. Kavanaugh has two children and is a member of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
