Euan Blair – How Tony Blair's eldest son went from gawky teen to multimillionaire, worth more than the former PM
HE is remembered as the goatee-bearded teenager standing awkwardly on the steps of Number 10 alongside his Prime Minister dad.
But now Euan Blair is carving out a different history for himself – one as a multimillionaire tech entrepreneur.
The eldest son of former PM Tony Blair has become so successful, his earnings are said to have eclipsed his famous father’s.
Today, it was revealed Euan’s education tech firm, Multiverse, has been valued at a whopping £147 million – meaning Euan’s 47 per cent stake is now worth almost £70 million.
Not bad for a business that has been going less than five years.
Family fortunes
The valuation comes as investors ploughed £32.3 million into the company, said to be the largest ever UK education tech investment.
While Tony Blair has made a fortune from advising foreign leaders and corporations since leaving office, and is estimated to be worth £50 million, his 37-year-old son has done even better.
Euan, along with siblings Nicky, Cathryn and Leo, grew up during Tony Blair's 10 years in office.
He was 13 when his dad swept to power in 1997, and spent his teenage years in the glare of the media spotlight.
But Euan wasn't content to live off his father's fortune – and got his head down to embark on the path to success.
Education, education, education
Euan became head boy, completed a degree in Ancient History at Bristol and spent time studying at the prestigious Yale University in the USA.
He then worked as an intern in the US Congress before joining investment bank Morgan Stanley’s graduate programme.
While there Euan met fellow brain Sophie Adelman, who had studied at Cambridge and Stanford and was working in recruitment.
In 2016, the pair founded their tech start-up, initially called WhiteHat.
'There’s so much pressure on kids now to go to university. Half the time they don’t really know why they’re going.'
The aim was to provide an alternative to university, placing young people on apprenticeships with global businesses, like Google, BP, Microsoft and Facebook based on their skills.
It was the complete opposite of Tony Blair’s pledge, while in office, to get half of school leavers into university with his famous rallying cry: "Education, education, education!"
Instead, Multiverse charges companies £1,500 for each hire, then gets paid to provide training through the Apprenticeship Levy — a pot of cash that big companies have to fund by law.
Euan said: “There’s so much pressure on kids now to go to university. Half the time they don’t really know why they’re going.
"A lot end up dropping out. In so many cases it would be better for them to go straight from school into an apprenticeship and real experience of workplaces.”
By the end of 2018 Multiverse had 43 staff and had placed 550 apprentices.
Last year, it trained more than 2,000 apprentices, putting them on track of their previous aim of 10,000 apprentices by 2023.
There’s a diversity promise in their aims too. Fifty five per cent of apprentices are people of colour, 22 per cent are black and 53 per cent are women. A third received free school meals.
Business and pleasure
Euan, who was 13 when Tony Blair came to office in 1997, has found an equally successful partner in his wife, Suzanne Ashman.
They were introduced by former defence secretary Geoff Hoon, who had given Suzanne a work experience placement, and were together seven years before they married in 2013.
Suzanne, who is the daughter of motor racing entrepreneur Jonathan Ashman, is a partner at venture capital firm Local Globe. In 2017 she was listed as a prominent European financier on Forbes 30 under 30 list.
Euan himself had transformed too.
He works in a co-working space in Marylebone, London, not far from where he lives in a £3.6 million townhouse with his wife Suzanne, and replaced the bum-fluff he sported when the Blairs left Downing Street for the last time in 2007 with hipster glasses.
In a quirk common to many a tech giant, Euan once admitted he wore a uniform of branded WhiteHat sweatshirts, saying he had them in “different colours, so I can wear a different one every day.”
Global reach
The new investment boost will enable them to hire another 200 staff and open an office in New York this month.
Not even a global pandemic could stop the firm's ascent.
Euan said: “Through 2020, despite COVID-19, we added some of the world’s best companies as new clients and tripled our community of apprentices – in 2021 we’re ready to spread these opportunities even further.”
The Blair dynasty
Euan isn’t the only high-flying Blair child. They are all millionaires, thanks to their parents bestowing them properties from their £37 million empire.
But they have also created their own success too.
Nicky, 35, Tony and wife Cherie’s second child, is now a football manager and married to divorce lawyer, Alexandra Bevir. They welcomed a baby girl – Tony and Cherie's first grandchild – in 2018, and live in a £2.75 million property in London.
Kathryn has followed her mum's footsteps and is a successful barrister. She married her long-term boyfriend James Haslam in Sardinia in 2019 and they live in a £2.4 million home in West London.
Leo, 20, who was a surprise baby born while Tony and Cherie lived in Downing Street, is a student and a Labour Party member.
Asked in an interview with the Evening Standard newspaper in 2018 if Tony was proud of him, Euan replied: “It’s funny. People ask that question and I think: ‘What are the circumstances in which I’d say: ‘No, he really hates what I’m doing.’? Of course he thinks it’s good because he realises I care about it.”
And of course, he’s always asked if he might follow his father into politics.
He said: “I’ve not really thought about it. I love doing this and this is a long-term thing I care about; employment and creating opportunities. No. I’m not about to launch into a political career.”
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