Forbes/Bloomberg declare Lowy No 1
Frank Lowy has been reported to be the wealthiest Australian by prestigious financial publications Forbes and Bloomberg.
The 78-year-old Slovak-born shopping centre magnate has passed James Packer and Andrew Forrest on the road to the top spot.
A spokesperson for Westfield, the company Lowy chairs, told J-Wire: “There has been speculation over the last six months that this has already happened…but it was never substantiated.”
Westfield, headed by Lowy and his three sons, owns or runs 119 malls in Australia, the United States, New Zealand and the U.K.
The news was broken by Forbes after its rich list revealed Forrest had lost $4.6 billion in the recent market collapse. Lowy and his family were not immune to the world economic crisis, but the 9% they own of Westfield, the world’s largest shopping mall company, was enough to secure Lowy the top spot.
Lowy, a Holocaust survivor and a commando member of the Golani Brigade which fought to win Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, opened his first mall in 1959 in the outskirts of Sydney.
A former board member of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Lowy has now achieved another of his life ambitions in becoming a member of the FIFA World Cup Organising Committee. He is heading a bid to have the world’s supreme soccer event held in Australia in 2018 or 2022.
AAP’s global ranking places Lowy as the world’s 234th richest person.
