Edmond Jacob Safra (; 6 August 1932 – 3 December 1999) was a Lebanese-Brazilian billionaire banker and philanthropist of Syrian descent. He continued his family tradition of banking in Brazil and Switzerland, and was married to Lily Watkins from 1976 until his death. He died in a fire that attracted wide media interest, and was judicially determined to be due to arson.
Early life
Edmond Jacob Safra was born on 6 August 1932, in Beirut, Lebanon,<!-- do not change this to Aleppo and do not change his birthplace to Aleppo in his infobox. The cited source says he was born in Beirut, was Lebanese citizen and had Lebanese nationality. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jacob_Safra#Safra_The_Lebanese_origins_of_the_Safra_family for more evidence and sources --> his family is of Sephardic Jewish background originally from Aleppo, Syria. His father, Jacob Safra, had opened the J. E. Safra Bank in 1920 in Beirut and in 1929 it became the Banque Jacob E. Safra which in 1956 changed its name to Banque de Credit National S.A.L. (BCN). By the time he was sixteen, Safra was working at his father's bank in Beirut, engaged in the precious metals and foreign exchange aspects of the business.
In 1949, the family moved from Lebanon to Italy, where he worked for a trading company in Milan. When Safra was 16, he earned $40 million during arbitrage transactions between Italian and British gold sovereigns. He used this money to obtain a financial house in Geneva, which became his Trade Development Bank, and used only ancient Arabic script for its bookkeeping. The family moved to Brazil in 1952, where he and his father founded their first Brazilian financial institution in 1955.
Career
In 1956, Safra settled in Geneva to set up a private bank, the Trade Development Bank, which grew from an original US$1 million to US$5 billion during the 1980s. He extended his financial empire to satisfy his wealthy clients from around the world. He also founded the Republic National Bank of New York in 1966, and later, Republic National Bank of New York (Suisse) in Geneva. The Republic Bank operated 80 branches in the New York area, making it the number three branch network in the metropolitan region behind Citigroup and Chase Manhattan.
Safra's banking interests served clients in Monaco, Luxembourg and Switzerland.
From 1980 until Safra's death, Walter Weiner was Safra's attorney, and CEO of Republic National Bank of New York until 1983, when he became its chairman. and US$8 million in damages, all of which he donated to charities.
In 1988, he also founded Safra Republic Holdings S.A., a Luxembourg bank holding company.
By the early 1990s, Safra's fortune was estimated at US$2.5 billion.
In 1996 Safra co-founded Hermitage Capital Management with Beny Steinmetz and Bill Browder. The hedge fund became one of the most important investment companies in Russia, and later became famous in connection with the Sergei Magnitsky affair.
On 17 August 1998, Safra's Republic National Bank of New York lost 45% of its net income due to its large holding of Russian bonds after the 1998 Russian financial crisis. The IMF funds, which Italian newspaper la Repubblica estimated at $21.4 billion, are said to have caused the 1998 Russian financial crisis.