Aviv "Vivi" Nevo (Hebrew: אביב נבו; born 1965[1]) is an Israeli-American venture capitalist. He is a major shareholder in Time Warner[2][3] and other companies, having built his fortune up from an initial $10 million inheritance.[1]
Biography
Nevo was born in Bucharest in Communist Romania in 1965. As an infant, he moved to Tel Aviv, Israel with his parents.[4] His father, a chemical engineer and his mother, an anesthesiologist, eventually divorced. Nevo is an only child. He is Jewish.[5]
Business career
Stan Berk, a former hedge fund manager who hired Nevo in the 1980s after they met at a Los Angeles gym, said Nevo worked for him from 1985 to 1988, and then "just disappeared." After a certain time period, they met again, and "Nevo had befriended billionaires and media titans.[6]
According to an anonymous business associate of Nevo, with an inheritance of around $10 million, Nevo set about investing and networking. The New York Times reported that Nevo "opened trading accounts at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, as well as Allen & Co., which eventually won him an invitation to Sun Valley... Through diligence and hard work, the right contacts and a lot of the right trades during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, he turned his inheritance into a sizable fortune ... Later on, Nevo began sprinkling money around in private companies, many of which were new media ventures."[4]
His venture capital firm, NV Investments, invests in technology companies worldwide, and is said to have been an early backer of The Weinstein Company,[7] and the largest individual shareholder in Time Warner.[1]
Personal life and reputation
Nevo is said to be averse to publicity: He has consistently refused requests for interviews, and was referred to by friends as an "international man of mystery."[4]
In July 2008, Nevo said that long-running rumors of an engagement to Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi were true.[8] The couple separated in 2010.[9]