Frank Lowy Fundation

10/16/2025

But beforehand, we also opened a coffee shop next to our delicatessen, and it was the first or second espresso machine in Sydney. There were a lot of Italians living in the area, and the coffee shop was opened on Sunday. So we were working seven days a week. Shirley and I used to get up Sunday morning, take [my eldest] David to my mother, then go together to the shop.
So we built those few shops next to us. I think it was four shops, and it was very successful. We rented them and [finally] sold them. So that was our first real estate venture. On top of that, the landlord of ours in Blacktown had four or five acres behind the shops next to the post office.
We thought, well why can't we try to buy it and build some more shops? We’d already heard about shopping centres in the United States, so we bought some architectural magazines, and we learnt a little bit about how to. We bought that piece of land, hired an architect, and created a small shopping centre of 12 shops, a small department store and parking for 30 cars. It was an unbelievable success. Meanwhile, we sold the delicatessen and the coffee shop, which gave us the capital to carry on business. We opened that shopping centre on the 9th of August 1959.
HD: It's incredible that you chose Blacktown because of immigration there. And then when you were in a delicatessen, you expanded into real estate and you just saw an opportunity. So it wasn't like you went to Blacktown to build a shopping centre. The plans developed as you could see things as they were happening.
FL: Practically my whole business career was instinctive; I have an instinct and then I do the research about my instinct. And that's the way I made decisions.
I'm very curious and, as you know, I'm paranoid. But at the same time, I'm an optimist because you cannot be a real estate developer without being an optimist. The paranoia must follow you, and that's how I think I can attribute my success; to those feelings and then the people I choose to be with.
When we sold out of Westfield there were people who used to work for me, started as young people and 30 years later there were still there. Of course, I was very lucky to have three sons like David, Peter and Steven, who are smart, hard workers, and also I think there is an optimism in the four of us and also the paranoia. I can't quite describe it to you, but the mixture of those does wonders.
HD: Frank, you once said to me, "always play the ball and not the man". But how do you avoid playing the man when you're playing tough to get outcomes in business?
FL: I think what I used to do is decide by myself where I want to be in those negotiations. And I just didn't give in. I kept my point. Occasionally in business, you have to give in, to give the other guys some victory also. But I decided where I wanted to be at the end of the negotiation, and once I got there, there was nowhere to go.
The opponent must have realised this, because you need the buyer and the seller all the time. Somebody has to be definite. I was definite because I believed that's the way to go. I don't like these negotiations that drag on for a long time. I lose patience and I know where I want to be. So why play around? Just state your position and stick to it.
HD: Frank, I'm going to move on from Westfield a little bit, and I haven't asked you this question before, so I'm incredibly interested in the answer. You have had a great privilege of meeting so many people around the world in your life, who has impressed you the most and why?

10/16/2025

And maybe that's a good segue from family into business. In 1955 you and your business partner John Saunders started out as partners in a delicatessen in Sydney. And how did the partnership in a small delicatessen lead to the establishment of Westfield Building Corporation? That seems quite a leap.
FL: Yes, it is something I wonder myself, but looking back is a lot easier than looking forward. Most of the decisions that we took were strategic business decisions. We could have opened the delicatessen in Bondi junction or in the city, but we had two opportunities: one in Bondi Junction and one in Blacktown. John lived in North Sydney and I lived in Dover Heights, and we chose Blacktown not because it was close and convenient, but because the opportunity in Blacktown seemed to be a lot better than in Bondi junction.
Immigrants were pouring into Sydney, and most of them went to the western suburbs. So we decided to go there and didn't mind the travel of an hour each way.
We left about 7:00am from Sydney, opened the shop at 9:00am and then came home 7:00pm or 8:00pm at night. But as I said, looking back, it was a strategic decision to go to Blacktown and why? The shop we rented was opposite the railway station. One day it was quite afternoon and I walked in the street to look around, and I see about three shops are being built next door to our delicatessen. I told John “listen we could do that”. So we decided to try it.

10/16/2025

Sir Frank Lowy Donates $18 Million to Tel Aviv University’s International School
Gift from Israeli-Australian businessman will expand TAU’s offering of global programs and collaborations.

Sir Frank Lowy AC is the former long-time Chairman of Westfield Corporation, founder of the Lowy Institute, and chairman of the Institute for National Securities Studies, relating to Israel's national security and Middle East affairs. This is an extract of Sir Frank's recent chat with Magellan's Hamish Douglass.
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Hamish Douglass (HD): Frank, firstly, to start, would you be able to provide our listeners with a brief background on your childhood and education and ultimately your journey to Australia?
Sir Frank Lowy AC (FL): Well, Hamish, the beginning of my life was very turbulent. I was born in Czechoslovakia in 1930. Eight years later, it became Hungary, so I was a Hungarian. Antisemitism was very difficult for us to cope with. In the town where I was born, there were about 5,000 inhabitants and 150 Jews. Business was difficult. The anti-Semitic laws prohibited us from owning businesses. So my father in 1942 decided to move to Budapest where we were able to mingle with the world without it being known that we were Jewish.
Life was quite good in spite of the war already raging. It all came to a sudden stop on the 19th of March 1944. The German army occupied Hungary and life turned terribly worse. I lost my father the next day because they caught him in the street, and I haven't heard from him since.
I was left with my mother, sister and brother. I went into hiding and I stayed with my mother. It's a very long story, it was a very difficult time. But by the end of 1944-45, the war was over for us and we went back to Czechoslovakia, which then became Slovakia. So you can imagine how many nationalities I had to cope with.
Only 35 Jews came back [to my small town]. So it was a very sad place and it was mainly males, and I had no company there. I didn't really want to go back to school. I decided to emigrate to Palestine at the end of 1946. I joined the Israeli army in 1947, fought in the Arab-Israeli war, and afterwards I got a reasonably good job. I learnt accountancy at night, got a job in the bank and I enjoyed myself very much. But I was very much longing to be with my mother and sister and brother who survived the war, and they, meanwhile, [had] emigrated to Australia. So being in Israel, then for about six years, I decided to join them, they sent me the air tickets and I arrived in Australia in early 1952.
HD: Frank, I don't think many listeners unless they are probably over 70 or 80 have any appreciation of that background. Many of us complain about issues that are going on in the world, but we have lived our lives in very peaceful times. You grew up in a horrendous period of antisemitism, and loss your father at a young age. Family is so important at the end of the day. What are the lessons you learnt from your parents that you're trying to pass on to your three sons and your grandchildren?
FL: Both my parents, together and individually taught me to be charitable, to share. And I do remember it well, but once we discussed it and my mother said: "If you have a little, give a little, if you have a lot, give a lot".
That became my ethos in life. Of course, the difficulties during the war also taught me to be vigilant, to be paranoid. And it taught me a lesson about if you want to succeed or survive, you need to be curious to see what's going on. Where are the opportunities for various activities of your life? And I think it did give me some grounding to my life later on.

09/28/2025

Frank Lowy making a charity speech at the you and soulmate donate at least $1.5 trillion for the charity of the less privilege people around the world

09/02/2025

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Man who took a sport into mainstream | The Australian
Frank Lowy stepped down as chairman of the Football Federation Australia (FFA) in November 2015 after 12 years at the helm. His departure came during a period of significant reform within Australian football, which included a move to an expanded congress that Lowy had initially opposed. His son, Steven Lowy, took over as chairman following the elder Lowy's resignation.

09/02/2025

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Frank Lowy Quote: “I don't work for nothing. I'm entitled to get ...
Frank Lowy's business philosophy centers on ambition, hard work, and learning from failure, emphasizing that "you make every move with an eye on growth, and results will follow". He stresses the importance of "never give up! People don't understand how persistent you have to be" when facing obstacles, advising to "take detours, navigate between the obstacles and make it happen". Lowy also notes that the purpose of business should be success and growth, not solely money, stating, "If your goal is just to make money, you won't succeed. Money is a commodity to use, not to be dictated by

06/30/2025

When Swiss police, acting on FBI intelligence, swooped in May and arrested several officials from FIFA, world football’s governing body, the game seemed up at last. Years of FIFA scandal and whitewash suddenly came into sharp focus.

Many countries that had bid to host the World Cup and lost in dubious circumstances – Australia among them in its vain quest to hold the 2022 edition – expected the whole house of cards to fall in short order.

But this is the FIFA melodrama, so inevitably there were more twists in the tale. President Sepp Blatter was re-elected, then announced his intention to step down. In September, he came under police investigation and was later suspended by FIFA’s ethics committee.

Yet, as with the most insistent telemarketing, there was more. Blatter then revealed that the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar stemmed from the collapse of a pre-arranged Cold War-style compromise:

For the World Cups it was agreed that we go to Russia [2018] because it’s never been in Russia, Eastern Europe, and for 2022 we go back to America. And so we will have the World Cup in the two biggest political powers.
Russia’s hosting of 2018 was safe. But the perfidious French – led by UEFA president Michel Platini, now also suspended for allegedly receiving a “disloyal” payment – and their voting bloc reneged on the 2022 deal, Blatter claimed, after former French president Nicolas Sarkozy met then-Qatari Crown Prince al-Thani and agreed to the sale of Rafale fighter jets.

If Blatter is telling the truth, then internal FIFA machinations made a farce of the whole bidding process and humiliated all the other aspiring hosts who arrived in Zurich with hopeful hearts in December 2010 – Spain/Portugal, Netherlands/Belgium and England (2018), and the US, South Korea, Japan and Australia (2022).

Australia’s risible return of a single executive committee vote for a A$43 million public investment, courtesy of the Rudd government, was the subject of Tuesday night’s ABC documentary, Played: Inside Australia’s Failed World Cup Bid.

Australia had already demanded its money back from FIFA when the goalposts were moved and the 2022 World Cup postponed until later in the year because of Qatar’s blistering summer heat. But the latest word from Blatter that Australia never stood a chance gives its bid team even more reason to cry foul. It also provides plenty more ammunition for those demanding answers as to why it threw itself into the World Cup cesspit in the first place.

The ABC program claims to offer “the inside story” of Australia’s disastrous World Cup bid. It offers film of strategy meetings, speech practice sessions and even footage from a camera smuggled into FIFA’s now-infamous Zurich hotel of choice, Baur au Lac. There, we are told, taking pictures is “verboten” (forbidden).

The program certainly rounded up some big players. They include Football Federation Australia (FFA) president and bid leader Frank Lowy, ex-prime minister and Lowy ally John Howard, Hollywood film director Phillip Noyce and good ol’ Sepp himself. As a range of people and FIFA spaces float across the screen, two contrasting figures dominate – the pugnacious Lowy and the oleaginous Blatter.

06/30/2025

Football Federation Australia (FFA) chairman Frank Lowy has written an open letter addressed to the football community distancing the organisation from FIFA's corruption scandal.

In a letter released hours after the shock resignation of FIFA chief Sepp Blatter, Mr Lowy said Australia ran a clean bid for the right to host the 2022 World Cup, even though others had not.

But he admitted "we made mistakes" and were in some cases "naive".

Questions have been raised in particular about the FFA's $500,000 donation to the North and Central American confederation, CONCACAF, during the bidding process.

CONCACAF was headed by headed by now-disgraced Trinidad and Tobago FIFA representative, Jack Warner. The funds were supposedly destined for a feasibility study to develop a Centre of Excellence in Trinidad and Tobago, but it was revealed later they were misappropriated by Warner.

Warner and five others put on Interpol wanted list

Shortly after Mr Lowy's letter was released, Interpol said it was putting Warner and five other former FIFA figures on its 'red notice' most-wanted list.

The red notices, issued at the request of US authorities, mean police in the countries where the men are located have the authority to arrest them.

Lowy said in his open letter the FFA had been the victim of a fraud perpetrated by former FIFA vice president, Mr Warner.

"The centre asked Australia to donate $4 million to the project. We compromised and offered $500,000 to fund a preliminary feasibility study," Lowy said.

"We sent a team to examine the site. We engaged an external sports facilities consultant to visit the site and prepare a report. We met with CONCACAF officials to agree the terms.

"The chief executive of the Centre, not Warner, gave us the bank account details for CONCACAF. We paid the money into that account and received confirmation it was received by the bank. It was paid into a CONCACAF account, not Jack Warner's personal account.

"When CONCACAF contacted us to say they were conducting an inquiry into its accounts, we provided information about our donation.

02/21/2025

07/21/2023