Poju Zabludowicz

Early life

Zabludowicz was born in Helsinki, the son of arms industry businessman Shlomo Zabludowicz, and raised in Tampere, where he attended Svenska Samskolan i Tammerfors, the Swedish-speaking school in the city. He graduated with a degree in Economics and Political Science from Tel Aviv University and later worked at BFG Bank AG in Frankfurt. He is married to UK-born Anita Zabludowicz. In 1989, he and his wife purchased a house on The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead, and later purchased the adjacent house in 1997. His father, Shlomo, built the family business around Soltam, an Israeli defence contractor.

Career ventures

In 1978, Zabludowicz was appointed a Director of Tamares, the family's holding company, and has headed the company since 1990. Tamares invests in a number of different private and public companies, and in real estate properties. The company owns 40% of the land in downtown Las Vegas. Today, Tamares Group holds a $3 billion portfolio. Its real estate holdings encompass 2.3 million square feet of office space.

In 1993, Zabludowicz set up Ivory Gate, a property investment company based in London. Using offshore vehicles, Ivory Gate made investments in UK commercial property.

In 2006, Zabludowicz established and was the chairman of the Advisory Board of Auctor Capital Partners, a corporate finance and advisory house for hedge funds. He has been the Chairman of the Advisory Board of Synova Capital from 2007 to 2014, a private equity fund specialising in investments in UK growth companies, and Chairman of Tamares Telecom since 2011, a privately held service provider that operates and markets communications services based on a new internationally deployed fibre-optic network.

Zabludowicz has been a Director of Mustavaaran Kaivos since 2011, a company that owns the mineral rights to the Mustavaara vanadium/iron/titanium deposit in northeastern Finland, and has been a Director and Member of the Human Capital Committee of Outotec from March 2012 until March 2017, a company that provides technologies and services for the metal and mineral processing industries.

Zabludowicz has served as a member on a number of boards, including the European Advisory Board of Citigroup, the board of directors of GEMS (an Asia Pacific private equity fund), and Stratos Ventures (an early stage venture capital firm with a focus on information and communication technology sectors).

Zabludowicz is the owner of the Finnish ice hockey team Tappara.

In June 2016, it was announced that ARTA, a fine art shipping startup based in New York, has raised $1 million in capital from a group of institutional and strategic investors, among them Poju and Anita Zabludowicz.

Judaism and Israel

Zabludowicz is the founder and former Chairman of BICOM, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, an organisation founded in 2001 which lobbies the UK government on behalf of Israel. He is reported to have given the pressure group more than £2 million in three years. He is also a Member of the Advisory Boards of CST (Community Security Trust) and UJIA (United Jewish Israel Appeal), and was a Trustee of Jewish Leadership Council.

Politics

Zabludowicz has given donations to David Cameron's leadership campaign and to the Conservative Party. According to Electoral Commission records, the Tamares Group provided £15,000 for Cameron’s leadership campaign in 2005 and has donated £55,000 to Conservative funds in 2006 and 2007, and £131,805 in 2010. To date, Zabludowicz has donated a total of £380,000 to the Conservative Party.

He has also donated €8,000 to Alexander Stubb's election campaign in 2014.

Other

The Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases opened in Sheba Medical Center through Poju and Anita Zabludowicz's donations. The center centralises under one roof all aspects of autoimmune research and treatment, and brings together physicians and researchers from multidisciplinary fields such as internal medicine, clinical immunology, autoimmunity, rheumatology, ophthalmology, neurology, obstetrics and gynaecology.

Poju and Anita Zabludowicz have been involved in a large number of activities, from sponsoring of exhibitions and art fairs, to organising various fundraising events. In 2014, they have donated funds towards the realisation of the planned Helsinki Guggenheim.

Zabludowicz has donated between $100,000-250,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

Zabludowicz has been a Patron of the Finnish British Chamber of Commerce since 2011.

Zabludowicz Collection

Since the 1990s, Poju and Anita Zabludowicz have been accumulating a 500-artist, 5,000-piece collection of artwork. They exhibit their private art collection at three different locations, one of them being 176, a gallery in a former 19th-century Methodist chapel in Chalk Farm, north London. Inaugurated in 2007, the Zabludowicz Collection's London project space presents exhibitions of collection works and new commissions by artists linked to the collection. One sculpture in the collection, a miniature statue of Jesus with an erection, surrounded by 50 other sculptures also with erections, has been considered "grotesquely offensive" by some Christians, one of whom has said she will bring a private prosecution against the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, which has exhibited the statue.

1500 Broadway houses a selection of works from the Zabludowicz Collection. The programme at 1500 consists of temporary exhibitions and events whilst the lobby is open to the public during office hours.

Across three locations on Sarvisalo, an island in Loviisa, Finland, the Zabludowicz Collection has initiated an international residency programme for invited artists. The residency programme offers an environment for the production of art.

Plans to build a privately funded contemporary art museum in Las Vegas have been put on hold.

In November 2015, it was announced that the Zabludowicz Collection will launch an artist residency programme in Las Vegas.

Reputation

Several prominent art magazines and websites have listed Poju and Anita Zabludowicz in their annual rankings:

Zabludowicz serves as the Founder and Trustee of the Zabludowicz Collection since 1994, Council Member of Tate Modern International (since 1999), Member of the Board of Kiasma (since 2009), and Co-Chairman of the BFAMI.

Controversy

According to The Jewish Chronicle, Zabludowicz hosted secret talks at his London home in March 2011 between Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Zabludowicz claimed in October 2011 that he was tricked into funding the lavish lifestyle and globetrotting of former UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox and Fox's adviser Adam Werritty.

Zabludowicz was called to the High Court in November 2013 as witness in Scot Young's divorce case.

In February 2017, it was reported that Israel Police are investigating whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received gifts or other benefits from Zabludowicz as part of a corruption investigation against the prime minister.

Personal life

Zabludowicz and his family reside mainly on The Bishops Avenue, a street in London referred to as Billionaire's Row, and have homes in Caesarea, Tel Aviv, and Sarvisalo, a small island in Finland. He and his wife have commissioned a £60 million pair of "his and hers" mansions in London with an adjoining art gallery. They also own a 120-ft yacht. In January 2017, it was revealed that Zabludowicz has purchased a ₪25 million home in Neve Tzedek, a neighborhood of Tel Aviv. This purchase was listed as the 11th most expensive real estate deal in Israel in 2016.

In 2008, Zabludowicz was listed at number 30 in the Jewish Chronicle Top 100, a "list of those who wield the greatest influence on British Jewry." In 2014, he was listed at number 75.

In 2015, in its annual ranking of the wealthiest people in Israel, Forbes Israel ranked Zabludowicz 13th with a personal net worth of ₪8.7 billion. He was also ranked 37th on The Estates Gazette Rich List, a comprehensive guide to the wealth of those involved in the UK’s property market, compiled by the authors of The Sunday Times Rich List.

In 2015, Anita Zabludowicz, Poju's wife, received an OBE for her services to the arts.

In 2017, Poju and Anita Zabludowicz were ranked the 9th richest couple in Britain.