Steven Lowy

Early life and education

Lowy was born to a Modern Orthodox Jewish family, in Sydney, the youngest son of Shirley and Frank Lowy, and educated at Sydney Grammar School and the University of New South Wales where he graduated as a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours). He was awarded the University Prize for his honours thesis and later co-authored a paper with Professor Mark Hirst published in the academic journal Accounting, Organizations and Society.

He joined Westfield Holdings in 1987, was appointed a Director of Westfield Holdings in 1989 and a Managing Director in 1997. He has also been a Director of Westfield Management Limited, the manager of Australia’s then leading retail property trust, Westfield Trust since 1988. Prior to joining Westfield Holdings in 1987 he worked in investment banking at First Boston Corporation in the US for two years.

Westfield

Westfield was listed on the Sydney Stock Exchange in 1960 by Lowy’s father, Frank and his partner John Saunders. The pair were newly arrived immigrants to Australia and had opened a small delicatessen shop in the western suburbs of Sydney. Their venture was a success and their ambition led to the expansion of their business to include the development of residential housing and larger shopping centres.

The first Westfield centre was built in Blacktown in Sydney’s western suburbs in 1959. This was shortly followed by a new centre in Hornsby in Sydney’s north in 1961. The company flourished and expanded to other Australian cities and then the United States in the mid-1970s and to New Zealand in 1997 and the United Kingdom in 2000. At this point, Westfield had 86 centres in its global portfolio, with some 13,200 retailers and $24.1 billion in assets.

In 2004, the various Westfield entities were merged to create Westfield Group to provide the scale and financial heft required to continue international expansion. This led to the creation of two landmark shopping centres in London (Westfield London at Shepherd’s Bush in 2008) and Westfield Stratford City (on the site of the 2012 London Olympics) in 2011.

In 2014 Westfield Group underwent another major corporate restructure in which its Australian and New Zealand operations merged with Westfield Retail Trust to create a new company, Scentre Group. At the same time, another new, separate company, Westfield Corporation, was created to own and manage the former Westfield Group’s shopping centres in the US and UK.

More recently, Westfield Corporation opened Westfield World Trade Center in New York on 16 August 2016. They have also advanced plans to build its first shopping centre in Europe, in Milan Italy.

A feature of the company during this period was a marked shift towards high quality "iconic" or flagship malls showcasing the world’s best retailers and luxury brands. Five-star service and upscale restaurants and entertainment were a critical element in this shift, as was its adoption of a more aggressive "innovation" strategy to use digital technology "to better connect the retailer with the shopper". Since the establishment of Westfield Labs based in San Francisco in 2012, several digital initiatives have been piloted and implemented in several Westfield shopping centres around the world. Westfield Labs has been recognised by Fast Company magazine as one of the 50 most innovative companies in the world, and as one of the Top 10 retail companies for "giving the mall a high-tech makeover".

Philanthropy and community activity

Outside of his business interests he has been President of the board of Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2006 – 2013), Chairman of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute (2008-2013), and is a director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, a Sydney-based think tank, and the Lowy Medical Research Institute, a private medical organisation.

Steven was a member of the Prime Minister’s Business-Government Advisory Group on National Security and has been the Presiding Officer of the NSW Police Force associate degree in Policing Practice Board of Management.

Together with his father, Frank, and two brothers, David and Peter, he plays a key role in decisions about the Lowy family’s philanthropic activities. In recent years, the family has supported the establishment of the Lowy Cancer Centre at the University of NSW, a new building (the Lowy Packer Building) to house the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and the St Vincent's Centre for Applied Medical Research. The building was opened by Princess Mary of Denmark on 3 September 2008. In 2013 Frank Lowy revealed to a Philanthropy Australia audience that his family had donated more than $350 million to various causes during the previous decade.

Football

Lowy is a passionate football fan and played the game competitively throughout his youth. He continued to compete in Masters’ tournaments until injury ended his playing career in his early ‘50s. On 17 November 2015 he was elected as a director of Football Federation Australia by nine state football federations and a representative of the 10 Hyundai A-League clubs which form Australia's national football competition. He was then elected Chairman by his fellow directors.

Personal life

Lowy married Judy Levin in 1986. They have four children.