Frank Lowy is grateful to Australia for the opportunities he was given after arriving in 1952 as a penniless refugee from war torn Europe. He found a country that embraced fresh ideas and innovation, and with hard work he was able to make a huge success from his efforts.

“I was welcomed in Australia from day one,” he says. “I never suffered any kind of discrimination. Australia has been wonderful to me. It gave me opportunities I couldn’t have dreamed of. The fact I didn’t speak much English and I had little education or money made no difference. I am, and will always be, deeply grateful to Australia, my adopted country. This is a country of fairness and equality.“ It’s a statement typical of the humility and work ethic of a man who has achieved so much, yet continues to dream.

After eight tumultuous decades of life, Frank Lowy, one of the world’s richest and most successful retail developers, should be enjoying the fruits of his labour aboard his luxury US$80 million yacht, Ilona. It’s not like he hasn’t earned the right to kick back a little. He is respected and feted at the highest levels around the world. His enormous property empire, stretching from his hometown of Sydney to the United States and Britain, is in its fiftieth year as the world’s largest listed property group in terms of market capitalisation, with 119 shopping centres worth AU$70 billion.

Management remains a tightly held family affair, with the group in the safe hands of Lowy and sons Peter, Steven and David. The group is busy building the planet’s two largest shopping centre developments: in Sydney’s CBD and Stratford, near London’s 2012 Olympic site.

His legacy is also safe. He has established a well-regarded political and social research centre and forum called the Lowy Institute for International Policy. His name is on a new cancer research centre to which he donated AU$10 million. He’s on the board of Australia’s Reserve Bank, and has been president of the board of trustees for the prestigious Art Gallery of New South Wales. He’s famed for his philanthropy, donating millions of dollars every year and he’s proudly seen his three sons move into the massive international retail mall business he built from scratch.

Yes, a little R&R would be well-deserved, but try telling that to Frank Lowy.

As a young teenager Lowy was forced to survive on the war-torn streets of Budapest, hiding from the Nazis, scrounging food, living on his wits trying to protect his family. He lay awake at night listening in horror as Nazi thugs worked their way ever closer to the family’s hiding place, beating and killing Jews. His father was out trying to get food when he was seized and taken to Auschwitz concentration camp and beaten to death.

Lowy survived, but kept his nightmares of the Holocaust buried deep within for the next 40 years. When World War II was finally over, the 17-year-old Frank Lowy and thousands of other young Jews took up guns to fight for the survival of the fledgling State of Israel. He became a commando, skilled at fighting silently and killing with knives and hands at close quarters. Surviving the Holocaust bred a toughness in him, a determination never to give in that has remained with him ever since.

In 1952 his sister, brother and mother migrated to Australia, and he decided to join them. He knew nothing about the country, but Australia was the new world, and a fresh start. He got a job in a tool-making factory.

“Even though I was a newcomer and spoke little English, it made no difference to the other workers in that factory,” he says. “They accepted me in a matter-of-fact way. It made no difference to them that I was a ‘new Australian’. For the few months I worked in that factory, I was part of that community.” He was pleasantly surprised at his immediate acceptance, and experienced it again and again throughout his life in his new country. He knew he had found a new home.

“Through all levels of Australian society, from the factory floor to the top echelons of business, I feel I’ve always been given ‘a fair go’.”

He was a fast learner and quickly saw the opportunity hard work could bring. He worked seven-day weeks delivering groceries to shops around Sydney, increasing his orders by paying close attention to his customers’ needs. His family was accepted into Sydney’s Jewish community and he married an Australian Jewish girl.

During his deliveries around Sydney he spotted a delicatessen next to a suburban railway station and recognised its potential. Sydney’s growing migrant community was desperate for the food and coffee from their old homelands. Lowy bought the shop with a partner and it boomed.

Getting a loan was tough, but a local bank manager saw potential in the young Lowy and agreed to lend him the money from his own pocket to form a company called Westfield – it was in Western Sydney and near a field – to build a small shopping centre near the delicatessen. Lowy’s shopping centre empire was launched.

He’d studied how people shopped and discovered the key to success – underground car parks so people could drive in and shop in comfort in centres built close to where they lived. It was a successful formula, and one he used time and again.

Lowy was involved in every level of the operation, scrutinising every detail.
On Saturdays he’d stroll through the shopping centre talking to shop owners and customers, getting feedback on what they liked and didn’t like. Westfield expanded rapidly, building shopping centres across Australia.

In the 1970s Lowy took the enormous step of taking his shopping centre formula to the United States. American shopping malls had existed for many years, but they were generally vast impersonal places, spread around a massive parking lot way outside cities at highway junctions. It was tough to break into the American market, but Lowy did his sums and found a run-down mall in Connecticut that had potential. They cleaned it up, made it more family friendly, opened pedestrian areas, cut the size of the shops, and it took off.

Shop owners loved the personal attention Lowy and his team lavished on them, and they queued to take a spot in Westfield malls.

Back in Sydney Lowy was expanding into being a major shareholder in giant retail chains and then bought a TV station, the lowest performing network in Australia, with the idea of making it number one. It was a tough struggle but one highlight was winning broadcast rights to the 1988 Seoul Olympics. It gave Lowy access to the world leaders of sport, and he relished the experience.

Those who have worked with him say a deal may look hopeless but then at the last minute he would pull something out of his hat to seal it. He frequently worked through the night and all the next day without a break to get a deal done. It was a relentless drive for financial security. As his three sons David, Peter and Steven became adults, they joined the business. “We eat, sleep and talk business,” Lowy says. “This is not an eight-hour a day commitment. We are at it twenty-four hours, on the weekend too.”

Meanwhile, in what little free time he had, Lowy was heavily involved in promoting his beloved game of football. In the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s football in Australia was mostly played by immigrants and teams were built around ethnic groups. Lowy was determined to bring the game up to a professional level and widen its popularity. He pushed the game to be played in summer so it would not compete with more popular sports like rugby league and Australian rules football. He broke down the ethnic base of clubs, transforming them into city-based teams supported by all. Step by step he helped pull football up by its own bootstraps. It was momentum which culminated in 2006 when the Australian team finally won its place to compete in the World Cup in Germany, then this year in South Africa.

By the time Lowy reached his fifties the strain of intense work started to take its toll. Doctors advised him to ease back. He gave up smoking and threw himself into playing tennis. But there was more at play. When a doctor asked about his youth, Lowy suddenly unburdened himself. It was the first time Lowy ever told anyone of the horrors he lived through as a teenager. The doctor advised him to get it off his chest and tell his family. Lowy gathered his family together, turned off the phones, and for three hours spoke nonstop about his nightmare of surviving on the streets of Budapest, constantly battling to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo and Nazi thugs. His family was stunned. Even his wife Shirley was shocked, but she felt it explained why he never sat with his back to a door and why he always chose a table at a restaurant with a good view of the entrance. Lowy felt a heavy load suddenly lift from his soul. His health improved and he felt like a new man.

“Talking about my childhood in the Holocaust was a good thing,” Lowy reflects. “If you keep bottling it up, the bottle will explode if it gets over-filled. I think I shocked my family quite a bit, but it brought us closer and it made my life a lot easier.”

He can talk about surviving the Holocaust more freely now, and without hate. “This is also a good thing even though those things were horrible. Most of those who did those things are not alive any more. Hatred and bitterness only makes you bitter.”

His teenage struggle for survival gave him a deeper appreciation of the freedom he found in Australia, and the determination to seize the opportunities that existed in his new homeland. “I know what it means not to have things such as freedom or food,” he says. “Australia has been very good
to me and it had the environ-
ment that allowed me to become very successful.”

Lowy is a major supporter of Israel, but he can’t stand conflict. He prefers to talk until a consensus is reached and a resolution emerges. He hasn’t slowed down as he approaches 80. His sons have taken on more of the work, but Lowy’s still got a firm hand on the tiller of his international retail empire.

As a measure of Lowy’s phenomenal success, an investment of AU$1000 in Westfield shares when it began in 1960 would be worth a staggering AU$242 million today. His family are multi-millionaires but Lowy says he gives away “many millions more” than his own AU$16 million annual salary.

“When you give, you get so much out of it,” he says. “Just the knowledge that you are helping gives you a sense of deep satisfaction.”