Lyor New Yorker 1

GONIFF WITH THE WIND: “The Billionaire’s Playlist,” an expansive piece in the 1/20 issue of The New Yorker, chronicles the adventures of Warner Music Group owner Len Blavatnik from Russia’s “aluminum wars” to the U.S. media market. In addition to being a startling glimpse into the kleptocracy that is Putin’s Mother Russia, Connie Bruck’s sprawling article offers some hair-raising details about former Warner exec Lyor Cohen. Among the standouts: Lyor’s campaigning for the job of then-Chairman Edgar Bronfman, Jr., who had brought him into WMG in the first place (“not long after the public embarrassment of [Cohen’s] fraud trial”), prompting the Seagram scion to moan, “Lyor just threw me under the bus.” (1/16p)