Sir Frank P. Lowy ( ; born 22 October 1930) is an Australian-Israeli businessman of Jewish Slovakian-Hungarian origins and the former long-time Chairman of Westfield Corporation, a global shopping centre company with 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. 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 billion in 2021, Lowy was ranked as the ninth richest Australian according to the Financial Review Rich List; having been the richest person in Australia during 2010. Forbes Asia magazine assessed Lowy's net worth at billion in January 2019 and placed him fourth in its Australia's 50 Richest people. 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 Securities Studies, an independent academic institute that studies key issues relating to Israel's national security and Middle East affairs. Biography Early life Lowy was born in Czechoslovakia (in what is now Slovakia), 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. 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. 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