Les Wexner
Leslie Herbert Wexner is an American billionaire businessman, the co-founder and chair emeritus of Bath & Body Works, Inc.. He has been the principal in Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria's Secret and La Senza, amongst other retail corporations.
Wexner retained Jeffrey Epstein as his financial manager from 1987 to 2007 and was initially the "main client" of Epstein's money-management firm, according to Bloomberg. Epstein ran his business from a house Wexner owned and sometimes lived in.
Early life and education
Wexner was born in Dayton, Ohio, on September 8, 1937, to parents Bella née Cabakoff and Harry Louis Wexner. Both his parents were of Russian-Jewish origin. His father was born in Russia and his mother was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She moved to Columbus, Ohio, as a toddler. Wexner has a younger sister, Susan. He is Jewish.Wexner attended Bexley High School and Ohio State University. In 1953, he won a minor award for his essay, published in the Ohio Jewish Chronicle, titled "Why I Love and Respect Judaism".
He initially expressed an interest in architecture but graduated in 1959 with a major in business administration. While a student at Ohio State University, he joined the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity. Wexner served in the Air National Guard. He briefly attended the Moritz College of Law.
Career
Wexner began his retail career working in his parents' clothing store, "Leslie's", which had been named after him. According to Wexner, he began working at his parents' store so they could take a vacation. Wexner analyzed the sales and inventory, identifying the most and least profitable items. When his father refused to adjust the inventory, Wexner decided to open his own store.In 1963, Wexner's aunt lent him $5,000, which he combined with a matching loan from a bank in order to start The Limited. The store took its name from its focus on moderately priced merchandise, such as skirts, sweaters and shirts, that sold quickly and quickly generated revenue. Wexner opened the first store on August 10, 1963, in the Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. One year later, Wexner's parents closed their store and joined their son in running The Limited. He opened the second Limited store in August 1964. He took Limited Brands public in 1969, listed as LTD on the NYSE.
A. Alfred Taubman served as a mentor for Wexner, starting in the mid-1960s, and the two partnered on many deals involving Taubman's shopping malls. In 1972, Robert H. Morosky sold his house and moved into a small apartment to serve as Vice Chairman of the board of The Limited having full confidence and belief in Wexner. Morosky resigned in 1987 and gave a number of interviews decades later criticizing Wexner's closeness with Jeffrey Epstein.
Wexner expanded The Limited considerably in the 1970s, having opened the 100th store in 1976. He took on significant debt in 1978 to purchase the importer Mast Industries, which provided him with essential business advantages over competitors.
In 1982 Wexner spent $105 million to purchase the much larger Lane Bryant retail chain of plus-sized clothing which came with $30 million in debt and acquired the lingerie business Victoria's Secret from Roy Raymond for an undisclosed amount of stocks, and $1 million with Raymond later describing Wexner as "very guarded", stating, "When I met him, it was as if he met the devil." Six months later, when Raymond was facing bankruptcy, he contacted Wexner and offered to sell Victoria's Secret.
By 1992 Victoria's Secret was worth an estimated $1 billion, and became known for the use of supermodels featured in an annual fashion show, overseen by Ed Razek.
In 1993, Wexner hired Len Schlesinger, a Harvard Business School professor, whom he later appointed as a company director, to advise him.
Over the years, Wexner built L Brands, a retailing and marketing conglomerate that included Victoria's Secret, Pink, Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel, The White Barn Candle Company, and La Senza. Previous brands that were spun off include Lane Bryant, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lerner New York, The Limited Too, Structure 9, Aura Science, The Limited, and Express.
In 2012, CNN Money described Wexner as the longest serving CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He was on Harvard Business Review's Top 100 Best Performing CEOs in the World, ranked number 11 in 2015, and number 34 in 2016. In February 2020, Wexner announced that he was transitioning from CEO of L Brands into the role of chair emeritus.
Corporate board memberships
Wexner was on the board of directors of Banc One from at least 1986 to 1991. Until 2002, he also sat on the Board of Directors of Hollinger International together with Henry Kissinger. He also served on the board of Sotheby's, American Ballet Theatre and the Whitney Museum of American Arts.Shapiro murder investigation
In 1985, Arthur Shapiro was a lawyer and partner in a prominent Columbus law firm, assigned to the Les Wexner account. Shapiro was to appear before a grand jury to testify about an illegal tax scheme that he was involved with – the scheme had no connection to Wexner.Days before his testimony, Shapiro was assassinated in a way that witnesses described as similar to a Mafia hit. Because of a potential nexus between Shapiro, Mafia, and Wexner, as part of the police investigation, many people and entities connected to Wexner were looked at for any connections to the mob. This was detailed in a police report, later dubbed "The Arthur Shapiro Murder File", which found some tenuous connections between Wexner and the mob, in some of Wexner's businesses such as a trucking company. A local police chief said the report's theories were highly speculative and not based on hard evidence.
The main suspect in Shapiro's murder remained Shapiro's business partner Berry Kessler – no connection to Wexner – who had a history of murdering his business partners by contracting Mafia hit men. Kessler was involved with Shapiro in the illegal tax avoidance schemes, had a motive to silence him, had a history of knocking off business partners, and was seen giving someone a lot of cash the day after the murder, who matched witness descriptions of the killer. Kessler died in prison in 2005 for a different murder, and never admitted to the killing. The Shapiro murder was never officially solved.
Jeffrey Epstein association
Wexner hired Jeffrey Epstein as his financial manager from 1987 to 2007. He was the primary client of Epstein, who claimed to only work with clients with a net worth of one billion USD or greater. Wexner purchased his New York property, the Herbert N. Straus House, in 1989 and sold it to Epstein in the mid-1990s following Wexner's marriage to Abigail. In July 1991, Wexner granted Epstein power of attorney and also instated him as a trustee on the board of the Wexner Foundation.In the 1990s, Les Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein were involved in relocating Southern Air Transport from Miami to Columbus. Southern Air transported goods related to Wexner's businesses, but in 1996, Customs agents found a hidden shipment of cocaine on one of the planes. Southern Air was shut down in 1998 after Wexner had received federal aid for the relocation of the airline, just weeks before the CIA Inspector General released its official findings on Contra cocaine trafficking allegations.
Wexner has been accused of failing to take action when complaints were raised against Epstein, after executives of L Brands reported in the mid-1990s that Epstein was abusing his power and connection to Wexner by posing as a recruiter for Victoria's Secret models. Maria Farmer contacted local and federal authorities about an assault she allegedly endured by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell while working as an artist-in-residence on Wexner's Ohio property in 1996. Within a year of Farmer's complaint, actress Alicia Arden filed a police report in Los Angeles detailing that Epstein had misrepresented himself as a recruiter for Victoria's Secret prior to another alleged assault.
In early 2006, Epstein was charged in Florida with "multiple counts of molestation and unlawful sexual activity with a minor." The New York Times reported that 18 months after the charges were filed, Wexner cut his ties with Epstein.
In July 2019, Wexner was included on a list of Epstein's "10 co-conspirators" within an FBI email, though Wexner continued to deny involvement.
In August 2019, following Epstein's second incarceration and prior to his death, Wexner addressed the Wexner Foundation, releasing a written statement that his former financial advisor, Jeffrey Epstein, had "misappropriated vast sums of money" from him and from his family. Wexner retained the services of Debevoise & Plimpton criminal defense attorney and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Mary Jo White.
Wexner faced additional public scrutiny in late 2019 and early 2020, when a group of wrestlers who are survivors of the Ohio State University abuse scandal publicly called on state and federal officials to conduct further inquiry into Maria Farmer's allegations of sexual assault at the Wexner property. The wrestlers called for accountability for the Wexner family's alleged involvement in Epstein's abuse and raised the issue of the continuing influence of Abigail and Leslie Wexner serving as the "biggest and best-known benefactors" of the university. Fallout from the scandal continued into the 2020s with particular focus paid to the part played by Wexner and his association with Epstein. Former wrestlers and their supporters criticized the university's board for failing to look into Wexner and in their opinion covering up the matter. Wexner's legal team had been stalling efforts by victims to subpoena Wexner. Former wrestlers and their supporters noted that board chair John Zeiger was a close friend of Wexner and that his daughter and law partner was Wexner's attorney. Zeiger did not recuse himself from matters regarding Wexner.
L Brands shareholders filed a complaint in the Court of Chancery of Delaware on January 14, 2021, stating that Wexner, among others, created an "entrenched culture of misogyny, bullying, and harassment," and was aware of abuses being committed by Jeffrey Epstein, which breached Wexner's fiduciary duty to the company and devalued the brand. The complaint also names Wexner's wife, current chair Sarah E. Nash, and former marketing officer Ed Razek, whose "widely known misconduct" was allegedly allowed at the company. On July 30, 2021, L Brands agreed to a $90 million settlement to resolve derivative lawsuits stemming from claims that combine Ohio and Delaware actions.
Following the passage of the 2025 Epstein Files Transparency Act, Wexner faced additional public scrutiny. In January 2026, Wexner was subpoenaed by the US House Oversight Committee congress to sit for a deposition.