Joseph Safra, Banker Who Was the Richest Brazilian, Dies at 82
An immigrant from Lebanon, he earned a reputation as a canny dealmaker overseeing a family banking empire reaching from São Paulo to Geneva to New York.
The banker Joseph Safra in 2002. An immigrant from Lebanon, he and his family built a private banking empire that reached from São Paulo to Geneva to New York.Credit.Lionel Cironneau/Associated Press
By Matt Sandy
Dec. 16, 2020
RIO DE JANEIRO Joseph Safra, a former immigrant from Lebanon who became Brazil’s richest person and one of the most successful bankers in the world through a lifetime of deal-making, died on Dec. 10 in São Paulo, Brazil. He was 82.
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Joseph Safra, the ‘world’s richest banker’ – obituary
His other assets included Chiquita bananas and the ‘Gherkin’ tower in the City of London
11 December 2020 • 8:38pm
Safra: he was taught always to look customers in the eye, ‘for eyes tell more than balance sheets’
Credit: William Volcov/Shutterstock
Joseph Safra, the Lebanese-Brazilian billionaire who has died aged 82, was reputedly, the world’s richest banker – having been born into a Sephardic Jewish dynasty that had financed Levantine camel caravans in the days of the Ottoman empire.
Safra’s fortune was estimated at more than $23 billion, making him the 63rd richest person in the world as well as the richest in Brazil. It was accumulated as the patriarch of an international conglomerate of financial, industrial and real estate interests, run according to principles of prudence and discretion learned from his father Jacob.