| Frank Lowy AC |
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Lowy at the Australian Football Awards in October 2011
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| Born | 22 October 1930 Fiľakovo, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) |
| Residence | Point Piper, Sydney, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
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| Board member of |
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| Spouse(s) | Shirley Lowy OAM |
| Children | Peter Lowy Steven Lowy David Lowy |
A$8.26 bn (2016 BRW Rich 200)
US$10.5t0 bn (2014 Forbes)Frank Lowy, AC (born 22 October 1930) is an Australian-Israeli 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 a former Chairman of Scentre Group, the owner and manager of Westfield-branded shopping centres in Australia and New Zealand.
With an assessed net worth of A$8.26 billion in 2016, Lowy is ranked as the third richest Australian according to the BRW Rich 200; having been the richest person in Australia during 2010. Forbes Asia magazine assessed Lowy’s net worth at US$4.6 billion in January 2014.
Biography
Early life
Lowy was born in 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 on the route to Mandatory Palestine by the British and deported to the detention camp in Cyprus. Lowy joined first the Haganah, then the Golani Brigade, and fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War in the Galilee and Gaza.
Career
In 1952, Lowy left Israel and joined his family, who had left Europe for Australia and started a business delivering small goods. 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); and listed the company on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1960 as Westfield Development Corporation. Saunders sold his interests and left the company in 1987.[citation needed] 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. 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 and the matter was settled with the ATO and no action was taken after that.
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.
In October 2015, Lowy stepped down as the chairman of the Scentre Group, a role that he had held for 55 years.
- An era ended in June 2018 when Lowy sold his Westfield Corp. to a Franco-Dutch group in a $16 billion deal that was Australia’s largest takeover.
- A Holocaust survivor, Lowy opened his first shopping center in Sydney in 1959, launching what became one of the world’s largest mall businesses.
- Today the Lowys’ main business is running their family investment house, Lowy Family Group, with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Sydney.
- Sir Frank is a principal of the group, along with his three sons, David, Peter and Steven.
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