As the man who made Jeffery Epstein professionally, the longtime head of Victoria’s Secret stepped down from his retail giant, seemingly finished. This is the inside story of how 86-year-old Les Wexner quietly engineered one of the biggest semiconductor projects in history.
Ohio’s richest resident, Wexner owns the New Albany Company, which is headquartered just a few miles away from Johnstown in the tiny suburb of New Albany, which Wexner started building in the 1980s. He still lives there today, and it was his development firm that secured the land for Intel to nab the mega-deal at the last minute.
When Wexner stepped down from L Brands and out of the spotlight in 2020 amid scrutiny over his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, many may have thought the retail mogul, now 86, was retiring after nearly six decades to quietly enjoy his billions. But, it turns out, he was just getting started. As new reporting by Forbes reveals, when local leaders didn’t have a site that fit the ultra specific conditions needed for chip production, which include access to millions of gallons of water a day, they reached out to Wexner’s New Albany Company. Within three days, it had come up with a proposal for the plot in Johnstown.
0:00 Intro
0:24 Who is Les Wexner
1:21 Wexner and Epstein's relationship
3:33 The New Albany Company’s deal with Intel
7:17 Residents react to the Intel deal
8:41 When and why did Wexner start the New Albany Company
10:56 The New Albany Company thrives despite Epstein controversy
13:41 Current state of the Intel construction site
16:11 What will be the aftermath of the deal for surrounding communities
18:50 Is this deal good for Ohio
20:23 What do Ohio residents think of Wexner
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2024/04/10/les-wexners-second-life-how-the-epstein-tarnished-billionaire-is-quietly-reshaping-ohio/?sh=94ef9b16a91d
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Ohio’s richest resident, Wexner owns the New Albany Company, which is headquartered just a few miles away from Johnstown in the tiny suburb of New Albany, which Wexner started building in the 1980s. He still lives there today, and it was his development firm that secured the land for Intel to nab the mega-deal at the last minute.
When Wexner stepped down from L Brands and out of the spotlight in 2020 amid scrutiny over his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, many may have thought the retail mogul, now 86, was retiring after nearly six decades to quietly enjoy his billions. But, it turns out, he was just getting started. As new reporting by Forbes reveals, when local leaders didn’t have a site that fit the ultra specific conditions needed for chip production, which include access to millions of gallons of water a day, they reached out to Wexner’s New Albany Company. Within three days, it had come up with a proposal for the plot in Johnstown.
0:00 Intro
0:24 Who is Les Wexner
1:21 Wexner and Epstein's relationship
3:33 The New Albany Company’s deal with Intel
7:17 Residents react to the Intel deal
8:41 When and why did Wexner start the New Albany Company
10:56 The New Albany Company thrives despite Epstein controversy
13:41 Current state of the Intel construction site
16:11 What will be the aftermath of the deal for surrounding communities
18:50 Is this deal good for Ohio
20:23 What do Ohio residents think of Wexner
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2024/04/10/les-wexners-second-life-how-the-epstein-tarnished-billionaire-is-quietly-reshaping-ohio/?sh=94ef9b16a91d
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
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More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hi everybody, I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is my Forbes
00:06 colleague Jemima McAvoy. Jemima, thanks so much for joining me.
00:10 Thank you for having me.
00:11 Of course, I want to extend a big congratulations. You just dropped an explosive investigative
00:16 piece today on billionaire Les Wexner's second act and how he's quietly reshaping Ohio through
00:22 the New Albany Company. So before we dive in, can you explain who Les Wexner is?
00:27 So Les Wexner is the founder of L Brands, which is a big retail conglomerate that at
00:33 one point included Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, and a number of
00:38 other retail brands. He started it as The Limited in the 1960s. He was born in Ohio.
00:45 His parents owned a small store there and he was inspired to start his own retail store,
00:51 which was The Limited, which he opened in the 1960s. And then he expanded by acquiring
00:56 Victoria's Secret and a bunch of other brands. And this grew into what was a $30 billion
01:01 business at its peak in recent years. It's been on the decline. And so Victoria's Secret
01:07 has spun off into its own brand. And with that, Les Wexner's public reputation has been
01:13 on the decline, but he still is the founder of this massive global retail network.
01:19 To your point from earlier, the story centers in Ohio where he was born and raised, but
01:24 he did have a fall from grace back in 2020 when details of his relationship with Jeffrey
01:29 Epstein came to light. Just how close were the two?
01:33 Yeah, so Les Wexner was immediately thrust into the spotlight after Jeffrey Epstein's
01:39 suicide in 2019. And the reason for that was Jeffrey Epstein, you know, accumulated a massive
01:47 net worth. Federal agents estimated it at $500 million. And Les Wexner is kind of credited
01:55 as the reason why he was able to accumulate like this massive portfolio of properties.
02:01 He was Epstein's main client. Epstein was Les Wexner's money manager for about two decades
02:09 before Les says he cut off contact in 2007. So in the years after Epstein's death, there's
02:16 been a number of reports about how Epstein used Les Wexner for access to women through
02:23 Victoria's Secret and money as his client. Also, in the past few years, Les Wexner has
02:30 been implicated or he's been accused by some of Epstein's accusers of being either party
02:39 to or involved in some of the, you know, alleged sex trafficking scheme. So in January, there
02:46 was documents unsealed from a few years ago, in which prominent Epstein accuser Virginia
02:53 Jeffrey said that it was a deposition from her saying that she had been trafficked to
02:59 Wexner on multiple occasions. He's denied this. He's never been charged with any crime.
03:04 But just his close relationship with Epstein has continued to, you know, cause these issues
03:10 and ongoing allegations and his reputation has never recovered. So he stepped down as
03:16 the CEO of L Brands and sold off all of his shares in the company, nearly all of his shares
03:21 in the company in the years after Epstein's death. So he kind of just disappeared from
03:25 the public eye after that.
03:27 But he's quietly making a resurgence. And that's where your story really begins in 2021,
03:34 when the New Albany company began its takeover of Johnstown, Ohio. Talk to us about that.
03:39 Yeah, absolutely. So the story does center around kind of the second life of Les Wexner,
03:45 which begins with this deal of Intel arriving in New Albany, Ohio. So Intel is a huge tech
03:54 company and they've been on this big push to build chip facilities so that, you know,
04:00 semiconductors or computer chips are used in everything from like our cell phones to
04:05 cars and they're super important. And there was this huge shortage during the covid pandemic
04:10 when the US realized that we were super dependent on, you know, countries in Asia and that we
04:16 didn't have our own domestic supply of chips. And that was a problem. So Intel has been
04:21 investing a lot of money into factories to bolster the US supply. So one of the factories
04:27 landed in New Albany, Ohio. And that's what got my attention was New Albany is a city
04:32 that was designed by Wexner in the 1980s and 1990s. So I was like, does he have something
04:38 to do with this? And from my reporting, it turns out that he does. What I learned was
04:43 that when Intel was initially looking at Ohio, almost every major US state was competing
04:50 for this project. It's a 20 billion dollar investment. It's a huge deal for employment
04:56 and just for for the state. And so it's Ohio's biggest ever economic development deal. Every
05:03 state was competing for it. Why did it land in Ohio? So when when Intel was initially
05:09 looking at Ohio, Ohio officials didn't have a site that worked for it. A computer chip
05:15 site requires a super specific environmental and geographic requirements. So Les Wexner
05:23 stepped in through his New Albany company, which is a development firm, and found the
05:27 site in three days and told, you know, told Ohio officials. And then a few months later,
05:33 Intel announced that this site was going to land in New Albany. And it's been a huge deal
05:38 for central Ohio. Land prices have been have been skyrocketing. And Les Wexner has been
05:44 buying up thousands of acres across the state and selling them for a lot higher than what
05:48 he bought them for. So it's just been this huge boon for his development firm. So the
05:53 people of Ohio, some of them are being offered to option their land. How much were they offered
05:59 to get and what did they know about who was buying this land? So it all started in the
06:04 summer of 2021. The Intel deal was announced in January 2022. But the New Albany company
06:10 started approaching landowners in the summer before and they all signed NDAs. So none of
06:15 this was public at the time. But the New Albany company offered landowners a few thousand
06:22 dollars to option their land. So to basically buy the option to purchase their property
06:27 at a future date because they didn't know that the Intel deal was going to go through.
06:31 And then when the deal did go through, a lot of these farmers and a lot of these homeowners
06:36 who are on land that wasn't all that valuable became millionaires, even multimillionaires.
06:41 There is one pork farming family that sold their land for 20 million dollars under the
06:46 Intel site. And we calculated that, you know, over 20 landowners that sold on the construction
06:53 site made a million dollars or more. So people made a lot of money. But in the aftermath,
06:59 there's a lot of people that are left in the area who didn't sell their land. They didn't
07:02 get offers to buy. And now they live near this construction site and they're finding
07:06 it very difficult to sell their land. And they they kind of feel like they've been left
07:10 in the lurch. So talk a little bit about that. What the response has been, because it seems
07:16 like there are some families that became millionaires. They're probably happy. And I'm assuming the
07:21 people who are surrounded by construction, maybe not so much. Exactly. There's there's
07:26 kind of two sides to the story. There's all of the people that became pretty wealthy from
07:31 this deal. And, you know, it's a great thing for them. And there's also you know, it's
07:35 a great thing for the future of central Ohio. People are super optimistic about what this
07:40 means. It's supposed to bring ten thousand temporary and full time jobs to the region
07:44 and they're high paying jobs as well in the semiconductor industry, which is, you know,
07:49 slated as an industry of the future. But on the flip side, there's all these people that
07:56 were just living in rural central Ohio, enjoying their lives. And they didn't know until President
08:03 Biden announced on TV in January 2022 that they were going to have this huge computer
08:08 facility plopped in their backyard. And a lot of these people aren't happy about it.
08:12 I mean, some of them didn't know what Intel was. They're not sure how they're going to
08:16 benefit from it. Right now, it's just a big annoyance that's uprooted their lives. So
08:22 in the short term, there's a lot of people who aren't happy and it's affected a lot of
08:28 neighboring communities. You know, they don't see the long term benefits yet. It doesn't
08:34 it doesn't it isn't clear to them what is going to benefit them. But it's a story that's
08:38 going to keep on unfolding. The New Albany Company and the semiconductor industry as
08:43 a whole is definitely a far cry from Victoria's Secret, where Wexner made his name. So when
08:50 did he start this company and why? Yeah, so actually, Les Wexner wanted to be an architect.
08:57 His parents did not want him to follow that career path. So he ended up studying business
09:03 administration, I believe, at Ohio State University. And then he went on to found the limited.
09:10 But in the 1980s, he was a very, very wealthy man from from his retail business. And he
09:17 the story goes that he wanted to build a house in the country. He was living in a very wealthy
09:23 Ohio suburb called Bexley, which is near Columbus. But he apparently wanted more control over
09:30 his surroundings. He wanted to design his perfect house. And then so he brought up this
09:37 land in New Albany, he was apparently driving around and saw this rural landscape and thought
09:42 it was beautiful and decided to buy up the land. And then over the course of the next
09:46 few years, bought up over 4000 acres, the vast majority of this town called New Albany.
09:53 At the time, all of the farmers didn't know what was going on because he did this using
09:57 a bunch of shell companies LLCs that weren't, you know, connected to him. So nobody knew
10:02 who was buying up all of all of their land. But over the course of a few years, all of
10:06 the farmers that were living there were moved out. And like Les Wexner started to build
10:10 this community, he flew in architects from that built Columbus Circle that built some
10:15 of like the most renowned architectural landmarks in the US and designed this kind of this,
10:26 it's a beautiful suburb of New Albany, and it's, you know, escalated into one of the
10:31 wealthiest suburbs in Ohio. So, so that was the foundation of the New Albany company was
10:38 he founded it to create this initial development. And since then, it's expanded a lot.
10:43 Wexner's involvement with Jeffrey Epstein obviously contributed to his fall from grace,
10:48 as we said, in earlier years, Victoria's Secret, which what a company he founded, has also
10:54 received some flack. So has the New Albany company really broadcasted Wexner's involvement?
10:59 No, the New Albany company definitely hasn't broadcasted Les Wexner's involvement, we were
11:04 able to confirm that he's the 100% owner using legal documents that we found during our reporting.
11:12 But his name, you know, isn't in any of the headlines, his name isn't on any of the big
11:16 deals, even though they wouldn't have happened without him and his money, he's funding the
11:22 company and he's buying up the land. And you know, one of the reasons may be that association
11:28 with with Epstein, Epstein was actually a director at the New Albany company, according
11:34 to paperwork from from decades ago, he was listed as a as a as a director with Wexner.
11:44 And I interviewed some former New Albany company employees, and they said they weren't sure
11:49 exactly what Epstein's role was, but he didn't seem to be involved in the operational side.
11:54 It was more just as he was managing Wexner's investments, and this was one of them. But
12:00 still, he did show up at the New Albany company offices, and he owned two homes in the development,
12:05 including one where he, you know, allegedly assaulted a young woman. So there's there's
12:11 overlap there. And that's one of the reasons that the New Albany company has been controversial
12:16 in the past. A New Albany company spokesperson didn't respond to any of my questions about
12:21 Jeffrey Epstein and the links there.
12:25 Since he wasn't super involved, but was involved enough. Did that hamper development with the
12:30 New Albany company at all?
12:32 No, the New Albany company has continued to thrive over the past few decades. Its crown
12:38 jewel is a business park that now houses some of the country's top. In fact, some of the
12:44 globe's top companies, including Amazon, Amgen, it's where Intel is moving into. So they they
12:53 have this huge business park which spans 11,000 acres. As I said, it's one of the wealthiest
12:58 communities in Ohio, the average household income is $220,000 a year. So no, and I think
13:07 part of that is probably the the separation from Les Wexner. He's not at the forefront.
13:12 But he has always been a very private individual. He's never even from the beginning, he was
13:17 very he didn't put his name on it early on, he tried to kind of obscure his involvement.
13:23 So that has been a trend. But I think that that's probably one of the reasons the community
13:29 has continued to thrive. It hasn't gotten too much scrutiny over the Epstein connection.
13:35 So Intel then started developing the land in central Ohio, and you were actually on
13:39 site. So can you take us there? Describe what that was like?
13:43 Yeah, I went to go visit in December. So it was a few months ago. And at that time, it
13:49 was, you know, it kind of looked like a meteor crash site. It's just, you know, this you're
13:54 driving through its farmland, its cornfields, its farmhouses, and then suddenly it's this
13:59 giant dirt pit, it's nearly 1000 acres. And it's just been completely cleared of homes.
14:05 And they've dug this giant pit to build the foundations of the two factories that they're
14:10 building there. And it was Christmas, so it was surrounded by a ring of houses that were
14:15 facing out onto the construction site. A lot of them had for sale signs. A lot of them
14:20 were decorated for the holidays. But you could definitely tell that it was difficult for
14:25 the people that were still living around the circumference of the site or around the perimeter
14:31 of the site. But the since May, they've been pouring cement, they've been building out
14:37 the foundations. There's actually been some delays to the project. So it's not expected
14:41 to open until 2027. So it's going to be you know, a few more years of construction and
14:48 but but Johnstown, which is the city that's closest to the Intel site has already changed
14:55 a lot. The main street is filled with traffic, almost all day heading to the Intel site.
15:01 And there's, you know, new new businesses popping up around it. There's a lot of change
15:06 and people are scared slash excited. So I mean, I think it's going to probably be a
15:12 very different place in a couple of decades, even maybe a few years. And the New Albany
15:17 company is playing a key role in that they've already proposed a huge commercial development
15:23 adjacent to Intel. And they've been working with the city of Johnstown, part of which
15:29 they've annexed into the city of New Albany. So they've actually taken the land under the
15:33 Intel site and made it it used to be in a city called Johnstown. Now it's in New Albany.
15:38 So they've expanded their own city into the you know, what was another city and they're
15:43 helping Johnstown plan for its future. So they've, they've helped with like a master
15:49 plan for the community, which as you can imagine, is kind of controversial among residents who
15:53 aren't sure if they want to become you know, this billionaire town like their next door
15:58 neighbor. This is a place where people are pretty, you know, down to earth and drive
16:03 tractors and have cows and wells and just don't really want to be bothered. So it's
16:08 going to be interesting to see what happens.
16:11 How did residents react to that annexation? Did they like it? I mean, what was the point
16:16 of that?
16:18 So the point of that was so the New Albany company wanted the Intel site to be in the
16:24 New Albany Business Park. Because part of the incentive deal that got Intel to New Albany
16:33 was tax abatements. So so they actually don't have to pay property taxes for 15 years. But
16:40 after that, it will be the city of New Albany that gets the tax benefits from having Intel
16:44 there. So it's actually controversial, the annexation as well, because the way it was
16:51 written means that none of the residential so people there's an expectation that a lot
16:56 of people are going to move to central Ohio, the people that are working for the factory,
17:00 and Intel suppliers will be moving in. So other people will be moving to but because
17:06 of the way the annexation agreement was written, New Albany won't get much of the residential
17:12 burden. So people are expecting that the other communities like Johnstown and Granville,
17:18 which is a town nearby, will be housing the people that are moving in. And they didn't
17:23 know this was happening. They were kind of kept in the dark about the deal that was brokered
17:28 by the New Albany company. And so they're kind of scrambling to figure out what happens
17:33 now how they're going to house all these new people moving in, what's going to happen to
17:37 their current residences, property values and taxes go up. So there's a whole mad dash
17:43 kind of happening among these communities trying to prepare.
17:46 I am curious, Les Wexner, he's a billionaire, he seemingly snapped up and monopolized the
17:52 real estate industry right in central Ohio. So is there any precedent? Has this happened
17:57 before where a billionaire goes in and takes all of the real estate?
18:02 Yeah, it's actually kind of common. So we have an example of Larry Ellison, who about
18:10 a decade ago, I think in 2012, bought up 97% of the Hawaiian island of Lanai. And then
18:18 we have Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, or the founder of Netflix, who bought up a
18:26 whole mountain in Utah and is redeveloping that. So it's pretty common, actually, for
18:32 billionaires to kind of buy up slash invest in a town. They have the money to do it. And
18:38 if they have a specific vision, then it's usually, you know, it does happen more often
18:44 than you would think.
18:45 I know you've received some conflicting reports, conflicting sentiment from residents in central
18:50 Ohio. But overall, since billions of dollars are being poured into the Buckeye State, is
18:55 there this idea that it's good for Ohio?
18:59 It really depends who you talk to. I think people like professors, economic development
19:04 experts on the ground in Ohio, local leaders, mayors, like they do seem to agree that this
19:11 is a really good thing. This is going to, you know, these are communities that can benefit
19:16 from this investment. And there's been a lot of follow up investment, like Amazon, Facebook,
19:23 Google, Microsoft are all buying land in the area or increasing their presence there. So
19:28 there is hope that this will, you know, bring a lot of new jobs and that that will be a
19:33 great thing for residents. But I think if you talk to homeowners in the communities
19:39 directly surrounding the Intel site and where like a lot of these tech companies are moving
19:43 in right now, it's kind of fear over the future. They haven't seen the long term benefits yet.
19:49 So they're going to have to wait and see whether, you know, it pays out like they've been told
19:54 it will. So there's skepticism. But then there's also a lot of hope. As I said, like local
19:59 leaders are really hopeful that Ohio hasn't historically been a state that's been super
20:05 attractive for people to move to. It hasn't been among the top performing states. So,
20:11 you know, when I speak to leaders in the state, they are really hopeful that this is going
20:16 to mean Ohio will be shooting up the rankings, more people will be moving there. And that
20:20 is, you know, a great thing for the state. What do people in central Ohio think of Les
20:25 Wexner? Because we talked about before the common thread of this is it's his second act.
20:29 He's yet to fall from grace or he had one. What do they think about him now?
20:35 It's another. The answer is also it depends who you talk to. So in New Albany, my impression
20:41 is that people are pretty protective of Les Wexner. He has built the city. It employs
20:47 like the business park employs 25,000 people. And he's invested, personally invested millions
20:55 into, you know, redeveloping central Ohio and the Columbus region. He's donated over
21:01 200 million dollars to Ohio State University. So for many people, he's a local hero. His
21:07 name is on buildings all over the state. If you drive anywhere, it's hard to it's hard
21:12 to drive anywhere without seeing his name somewhere. But there's kind of this elephant
21:18 in the room, like people see people almost seized up when I asked about Epstein. So it's
21:26 it does seem like, you know, he's got such a larger than life reputation and legacy in
21:33 Ohio that people are not very forthcoming to to criticize him or or discuss these more
21:42 sordid allegations against him. Jemima, I appreciate your reporting and thank you so
21:48 much for coming on in to discuss. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
21:52 Thank you.
21:52 Transcribed by https://otter.ai