Joe Ravitch was holidaying in St Barts about a decade ago when he first met the Russian oligarch who would later hand him the most politically fraught sports deal in history.
That Caribbean encounter with Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club, was born out of connections the banker had cultivated three decades earlier while advising Russia’s first post-Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin at a time of great hope and turbulence for the country.
Russian-speaker Ravitch has made a virtue out of employing patience in complex situations. The former Goldman Sachs banker, who went on to co-found US boutique bank Raine Group in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, thought the billionaire would never sell his beloved west London-based English Premier League club.