Frank Lowy

Sir Frank P. Lowy AC (/ˈloʊi/ LOH-ee; born 22 October 1930) is an Australian and Israeli businessman and the former long-time 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. In June 2018 Westfield Corporation was acquired by French company Unibail-Rodamco.

Lowy was the inaugural chairman of Scentre Group, the owner and manager of Westfield-branded shopping centres in Australia and New Zealand.

Lowy is the founder of the Lowy Institute, Australia's leading foreign affairs think tank, which has alternatively been described as "neoliberal", "centre-right" leaning or "reactionary". Lowy is also chairman of the Institute for National Security Studies, an independent think tank that studies key issues relating to Israel's national security and Middle East affairs.

Lowy was born in Czechoslovakia (in what is now Slovakia), is of Jewish Slovak-Hungarian origins and was forced to live in a ghetto in Hungary during World War II. He made his way to France in 1946, where he boarded the ship Yagur, heading for Mandatory Palestine. However, he was caught on route by the British authorities and interned in a detention camp in Cyprus. Lowy joined the Haganah, and then the Golani Brigade, and fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War in the Galilee and Gaza.

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. 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, was reappointed in 2000 and 2003, and concluded 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 investigated Lowy and his sons, David and Steven, on their involvement with financial institutions in tax havens located in Liechtenstein and Switzerland. Lowy maintained he had not done anything wrong, the matter was settled with the ATO, and no action was taken.

After turning 80 in October 2010, Lowy officially stood down as executive chairman of the Westfield Group effective May 2011, 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.

Lowy married Shirley Rusanow in 1954, having met at a Jewish dance when he was 21. They have three sons, Peter and Steven, who managed the Westfield business, and David, who manages the family's private investments. His wife was the founder of the Chai Foundation which is dedicated to finding and funding research into effective but less toxic forms of cancer therapy. His son Peter, is chairman of Tribe Media Corp, the parent of the Jewish Journal and served as chairman of the University of Judaism.