Eyal Ofer (born 1950) is a Monaco-based billionaire, born in Israel. He is a real estate, energy, technology and shipping magnate, an art collector, and a philanthropist. He is the chairman of Ofer Global, Zodiac Group and Global Holdings.
Eyal Ofer’s fortune originates from the shipping business his father founded in the 1960s, which he has expanded and diversified into new sectors. At the time of his father’s death in 2011, assets were divided between the billionaire and his brother, Idan.
Ofer owns Monaco-based Ofer Global, a group of international businesses focused on shipping, real estate, oil and gas, technology, banking and investments. It has an international shipping enterprise whose vessels are operated by Zodiac Maritime and Zodiac Tankers, part of Zodiac Group. Zodiac has more than 180 vessels that are valued using data from ship valuation service VesselsValue.com. It includes active ships and vessels under construction. Leverage is calculated at 35%.Ofer also controls Global Holdings, which has more than 120 properties and 2,500 hotel rooms, according to its website. He also has a controlling stake in Miller Global Properties, a real estate investment fund. Valuations for the properties are based on income capitalization, less calculated debt. Miller Global’s valuation is based on the average price-to-book multiple of three peers.Ofer has interests in oil and gas exploration and production through a 72% stake in publicly-traded New Zealand Oil & Gas, through Omni Offshore Terminals, a provider of floating oil-storage facilities, a 40% stake in the Victorian Otway gas assets in Australia and a 12% stake in the K2 oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico. The closely-held assets are valued based on either independent valuations from bankers or acquisition cost, and adjusted in-line with moves in benchmark oil and gas prices since the time of valuation or purchase.The billionaire’s overall net worth calculation rose by about $4 billion on Feb. 27, 2023, largely due to new information about leverage and size of the shipping fleet.
Biography
Ofer was born in 1950 in Haifa, Israel. His father, Sammy Ofer, was a Romanian-born Israeli shipping magnate and once Israel’s richest man. Ofer graduated from Atlantic College, an international boarding school affiliated with the United World Colleges, based in St Donat’s Castle, Wales. In his teenage years, he spent summers working on one of his family’s ships, loading cargo, scraping the boats’ sides and repainting them, as well as traveling to international ports.
He served as an intelligence officer in the Israeli Air Force from 1967 to 1973. He then studied Maritime Law at the University of London
Ofer joined the family business in the 1970s, after graduating from secondary school, Atlantic College in the UK. Upon joining, he helped expand the business beyond shipping and into industries such as real estate and banking. In the early 1980s, he turned his focus to the US market, especially Manhattan. One of his most successful investments to date was 15 Central Park West, a luxury condominium building which he developed with the late William and Arthur Zeckendorf in 2008. In March 2012, the building set a record for the most expensive single apartment sale ever recorded in New York, at $88 million. The record was broken two months later.
In June 2011, Sammy Ofer died at the age 89, leaving Eyal and his younger brother, Idan, at the helm of the Ofer family empire. According to the family’s spokespeople, Sammy had spent years planning for the generational transfer to ensure an orderly transition. They said the assets were divided equitably between the two brothers, with Eyal Ofer inheriting the real-estate businesses as well as stakes in Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, cruise-line operator Royal Caribbean, and real-estate developer Melisron, which was later sold.
Ofer, who is married and has four children who all work in various parts of the family’s businesses, is based in Monte Carlo, Monaco. He also has homes in London and New York. His charitable group, the Eyal & Marilyn Ofer Family Foundation, supports the arts as well as education and cultural causes.
Career
Ofer’s business interests are concentrated in shipping, cruise lines and global real estate within the Ofer Global group, a Monaco-based private company focused on shipping, real estate, oil and gas, banking and investments in Europe, North America, the Near East and Asia.
In 2014, he received an honorary lifetime membership of the Baltic Exchange in London in recognition of his contribution to shipping in the UK and global maritime trade. Other recipients of this award have included the Duke of Edinburgh, Winston Churchill, and Maersk Mc-Kinney.
He is “one of the most influential shipowners in the industry”, according to Lloyd’s List, ranking among its 100 most influential people, since 2013, including as tenth in 2016, and seventh in 2014, 2021, and 2022
He has spoken at industry events, including at the Milken Institute Global Conference in 2012, 2013 and 2015. Ofer also regularly attends the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos.
In 2018, Ofer joined the Advisory Board of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. The board is made up of a group of leaders in their fields from business, government, education and philanthropy.
In June 2023, Bloomberg reported his net worth to be US$20.7 billion
Arts
Ofer is listed among the top 200 collectors in the world of contemporary, modern, impressionist and post-impressionist art by ARTnews. He inherited half of an extensive collection from his father, including masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, and continues to expand a significant collection. He is associated with several Arts institutions and is a founding member of the Circle of Friends of Fondation Giacometti in Paris. He is a trustee and serves on the permanent acquisitions committee for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Through his family Foundation, in 2013, he donated £10 million to expand the Tate Modern museum in London. As a result, the exhibition gallery on the third floor bears his name. He gave £1.5 million to the National Maritime Museum to allow it to keep two 18th-century George Stubbs paintings (Portrait of a Large Dog and The Kongouro from New Holland) in the UK after a public appeal by Sir David Attenborough. The Foundation also made a donation of $5 million to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2019 to renovate the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, which reopened as the Eyal Ofer Pavilion in May 2023 with the first retrospective of Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti to be shown in Israel.
Milestones
- 1922 Father Sammy Ofer is born in Romania.
- 1950 Eyal Ofer is born in Haifa, Israel.
- 1970 Zodiac Maritime established in London.
- 1987 Global Holdings Inc. is established.
- 1995 Joins the board of cruise operator Royal Caribbean.
- 2005 Construction begins at 15 Central Park West.
- 2007 Global Holdings Inc. buys Altria’s former New York headquarters.
- 2011 Sammy Ofer dies in Tel Aviv at the age of 89.
- 2012 Unit at New York’s 15 Central Park West sells for $88 million.
- 2014 Baltic Exchange awards him honorary life membership.
- 2017 Ofer launches venture capital fund O.G. Venture Partners.
- 2018 Acquires a 70 percent stake in New Zealand Oil & Gas.
- 2022 Foundation launches healthcare infrastructure initiative at Ram Bam Hospital.
Philanthropy
Ofer is a supporter of artistic, educational and cultural institutions – including the Tate Modern and the National Maritime Museum in the UK and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art – through the Eyal & Marilyn Ofer Family Foundation, which continues his family’s philanthropic tradition. Ofer is chairman of the Foundation.
Ofer was one of the donors to the Gloriana during the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 2012.
In 2020, the Eyal Ofer Heart Hospital opened with financial support from Ofer for the Rambam Health Care Campus, which built the new cardiology hospital
Personal life
He is married to Marilyn Ofer, and they have four children. They reside in Monte Carlo, Monaco. In 2008, they resided in west London and had a home in Herzliya Pituah near Tel Aviv. He also owns an apartment at 15 Central Park West, a building he developed located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City
