Obituaries from page 76

Yehuda Ofer, Israeli Tycoon

Alan D. Abbey
JTA

y

ehuda Ofer, known as Yuli, one
of Israel's richest men, and
head of a family-run conglom-
erate that began on the docks of Haifa,
died at 87 on Sept. 12, 2011, at his home
in Herzliya. His brother and partner,
Sammy, had died in June at 89.
The Ofer brothers ran an industrial
empire worth more than $10 billion,
with interests ranging from ship-
ping to energy, real estate, media,
chemicals, property, banking and more.
Company brands include Israel Corp.,
Israel Chemicals, Zim shipping, Royal
Caribbean and Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank.
Israeli business and political leaders
praised Yuli Ofer's savvy, tough-minded-
ness and vision. Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu took a Zionist tack
in his comments, saying that Ofer "made
sure to run all his businesses from here"

and had "roots deeply planted in Israel."
Netanyahu said he is sure the Ofer fam-
ily "will continue in his Zionist path."
Yossi Rosen, who was a top-level CEO
at the Ofer family's Israel Corp. and
oil refinery business, said Ofer "was a
businessman, tough and thorough:' with
a "focused and concentrated" style of
management and a global vision.
Avi Levy, CEO of British Israel, who
worked with the Ofer family for 30
years, said that Ofer did not affect the
trappings of a tycoon. "He did not come
to people from above, but at eye level,
making an immediate chemistry?'
In recent years, Ofer passed the role
of company chairman to his daughter,
Liora, but remained in the decision-
making loop as recently as the com-
pany's merger with British Israel and
purchase of Ramat Aviv Mall, Israel's
most opulent shopping center.
Ofer was 6 months old when he came
to pre-state Palestine in 1924 with his

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Obituaries

family. He and his brother started as
shipping agents in the port of Haifa,
later purchased their own ships and
built their businesses from there. They
began to invest heavily in real estate in
the 1970s.
In recent years, critics of economic
concentration in Israel have named
the Ofers as among the tycoons who
received favorable treatment from the
government when it privatized large
enterprises such as the Dead Sea Works,
but others have said that the Ofers'
willingness to invest and take large
risks was laudable and helped Israel's
economy escape its socialist roots and
grow exponentially.
In the spring, just before Sammy Ofer
died, the brothers became embroiled in
a political and media storm over accu-
sations that ships owned by their com-
panies had docked in Iran.
The United States said the company
had violated sanctions against trade

Yehuda Ofer

with Iran and put sanctions on the
company, but the matter did not cause
the company trouble in Israel, and some
hinted that the Ofers were helping, in
some unspecified way, Israeli secret
diplomacy and special operations in
Iran.
Israeli business leaders and media
will now closely be watching the second
and third generations of Ofers as they
take control of the companies founded
by their fathers.