Frank Lowy

Frank Lowy AC
Lowy at the Australian Football Awards in October 2011
Born	(1930-10-22) 22 October 1930 Fiľakovo, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia)
Residence	Point Piper, Sydney, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Net worth	A$7.16 bn (2014 BRW)[1] US$4.60 bn (2014 Forbes)[2]
Board member of	Westfield Corporation Lowy Institute for International Policy
Religion	Judaism
Spouse(s)	Shirley Lowy
Children	Peter Lowy Steven Lowy David Lowy

Frank Lowy, AC (born 22 October 1930) is an Australian businessman and Chairman of Westfield Corporation, a global shopping centre company with US$29.3 billion of assets under management in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe. He is also Chairman of Scentre Group, the owner and manager of Westfield-branded shopping centres in Australia and New Zealand.^[3] In October 2015 he announced his intention to retire as Chairman of Scentre Group in May 2016. ^[4]

With an assessed net worth of A$7.16 billion in 2014, Lowy is ranked as the fourth richest Australian according to the BRW magazine;^[1] having been the richest person in Australia during 2010.^[5][6] Forbes Asia magazine assessed Lowy's net worth at US$4.6 billion in January 2014.^[2]

Biography

Early life

Lowy was born in Fiľakovo, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), and lived in Budapest, Hungary during World War II. He made his way to France in 1946, where he left on the ship Yagur, but was caught en route to British Mandate of Palestine by the British and deported to the detention camp in Cyprus. Lowy joined the Haganah then the Golani Brigade, fighting during the Arab–Israeli War in the Galilee and in Gaza.

Career

In 1952, Lowy left Israel and joined his family, who had left Europe for Australia and started a business delivering small goods. He was not very successful at first but made his way up the ladder. In 1953, he met fellow immigrant John Saunders. The pair became business partners, eventually creating Westfield Development Corporation through the development of a shopping centre at Blacktown in Sydney's western suburbs. Over the next 30 years, Lowy and Saunders developed shopping centres across Australia and the United States (from 1977); changing the name of the company to the Westfield Group and listing the company on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1960. Saunders sold his interests and left the company in 1987. In the 1990s Lowy took the company to New Zealand, then the United Kingdom in the 2000s.

Lowy was appointed a Director of the Reserve Bank of Australia in 1995, and was reappointed in 2000 and 2003, concluding his term in 2005.^[7] In 2008 Lowy and related interests were mentioned in documents stolen from the LGT Bank of Liechtenstein by a former employee. A subsequent US Senate probe and an Australian Taxation Office audit in which Lowy and his sons, David and Steven, were investigated on their involvement with financial institutions in tax havens located in Liechtenstein and Switzerland. Lowy maintained he had not done anything wrong.^[8][9][10]

After turning 80 in October 2010, effective May 2011, Lowy officially stood down as Executive Chairman of the Westfield Group, taking on the role of Non-Executive Chairman. Sons, Steven and Peter, became joint chief executives.^[11]

In October 2015, Lowy stepped down as the chairman of the Scentre Group following 55 years in charge.^[12]

Personal life

Lowy at the 2013 March of the Living in Auschwitz-Birkenau in front of the cattle car donated in memory of his father

Lowy is married to Shirley who he met at a Jewish dance when he was 21. He has three sons, Peter and Steven Lowy, who manage the Westfield business, and David, who manages the family's private investments.^[13] His wife is founder of the Chai Foundation which is dedicated to finding and funding research into effective but less toxic forms of cancer therapy.^[14] His son Peter, is chairman of Tribe Media Corp, the parent of the Jewish Journal^[15] and served as chairman of the University of Judaism.^[16]

In an Australian television production broadcast in 2010, called Family Confidential, it was revealed that Lowy had kept a secret about his survival in Nazi occupied Hungary. As a 13-year-old Jewish boy, Lowy had never known about the loss of his father, Hugo Lowy, who was beaten to death at Auschwitz concentration camp while protecting Hugo's younger acquaintance, Myer Lowy.^[13] As a mark of respect to Hugo Lowy and other Hungarian Jews, Lowy commissioned the restoration of a railway wagon that had transported Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, and placed the wagon on site at the former concentration camp.^[13] In April 2013, Frank Lowy attended the March of the Living, where he shared the story of how his father, Hugo Lowy, perished during the Holocaust, with thousands of young students from around the world who had gathered in Auschwitz-Birkenau to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah).^[17][18]

Wealth

Lowy has appeared on the BRW Rich 200 list every year since it was first published in 1983.^[19] In 2010, the BRW magazine measured Lowy's wealth at A$5.04 billion, making him Australia's richest person at that time.^[5][6] In 2014, his net wealth was assessed at A$7.16 billion by the BRW magazine and US$4.60 billion by the Forbes magazine.^[1][2]

Wealth rankings

Year	BRW Rich 200		Forbes Australia's 40 Richest
	Rank	Net worth (AUD)	Rank	Net worth (USD)
2007[20][21]	7000200000000000000♠2	$6.51 billion	7000200000000000000♠2	$4.30 billion
2008[22][23]	7000200000000000000♠2	$6.30 billion	7000400000000000000♠4	$4.40 billion
2009[24][25]	7000200000000000000♠2	$4.20 billion	7000200000000000000♠2	$2.80 billion
2010[26][27]	7000100000000000000♠1	$5.04 billion	7000300000000000000♠3	$3.50 billion
2011[28][29]	7000600000000000000♠6	$4.98 billion	7000400000000000000♠4	$4.30 billion
2012[30][31]	7000300000000000000♠3	$6.47 billion	7000500000000000000♠5	$4.40 billion
2013[32][33]	7000200000000000000♠2	$6.80 billion	7000400000000000000♠4	$5.30 billion
2014[1][2]	7000400000000000000♠4	$7.16 billion	7000600000000000000♠6	$4.60 billion

Legend
Icon	Description
	Has not changed from the previous year
	Has increased from the previous year
	Has decreased from the previous year

Football in Australia

A long time supporter of Association football in Australia, Lowy was Chairman of the Football Federation Australia (FFA) from 2003 to November 2015.^[34] Some observers credit him and John O'Neill, a former rugby union executive, with resurrecting soccer in Australia. A televised "A-League" is now in place, and the country has become a member of the Asian Football Confederation.

In 2007 Lowy commenced a campaign to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Australia backed with $43 million in support from the Australian Government.^[35] In 2010, amid allegations of bribery, politics, and back-scratching,^[36][37][38] FIFA awarded Qatar the rights to host the World Cup.

In 2015 he fell off a stage as the A-League trophy was due to be presented.In May 2015 he underwent surgery to resolve a complication arising from the fall. ^[39]

Lowy receivimg the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship in 2005

Philanthropy

Lowy has a reputation for giving of his time and financial support to a broad range of causes.

Awarded the title of Australia’s leading philanthropist by peak body, Philanthropy Australia, with donations in 2002 of A$10 million,^[40] the same year Lowy was reported to have answered a call by John Howard, Australia's Prime Minister at the time, to donate his annual salary of approximately A$11 million to charity.^[41]

In April 2003 to mark the 50th anniversary of his arrival in Australia, Lowy established the Lowy Institute for International Policy, an independent international policy think tank devoted to foreign affairs, and Australia's role in the world.^[42] It was reported that a gift of A$30 million was made to establish the Institute.^[40] Together with the Packer family, in 2008 Lowy donated an undisclosed amount towards the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.^[43] In 2010, Lowy and his family donated A$10 million to facilitate the construction of the UNSW Lowy Cancer Research Centre, a collaborative centre of the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales.^[44][45][46]

Awards and recognition

In 2000 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia for his service to the community through the development of the property industry and expansion of the retail sector in Australia and internationally, and as philanthropist committed to support of wide ranging social and cultural endeavours.^[47] The establishment of the Lowy Institute led him to being awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship in 2005 by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.^[48] On 2 October 2007 Lowy received the Henni Friedlander Award for the Common Good at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, United States.^[49] In 2008 Lowy was honoured by Australia Post for his contribution to philanthropy as one of the nation's five leading, living philanthropists with a commemorative postage stamp that was released on the eve of Australia Day as part of the Australian Legends series.^[50]

References

External links

• Stitson, Roger (15 November 2010). "A Study Guide" (pdf). Family Confidential (Australia: ABC TV). pp. 3–5. Retrieved 31 January 2014.