Poju Zabludowicz

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.

Chaim "Poju" Zabludowicz (born 6 April 1953) is a Finnish-British-Israeli billionaire businessman, art collector and philanthropist.

Chaim ("Poju") Zabludowicz was born in Helsinki, Finland, the son of arms industry businessman Shlomo Zabludowicz, who built the family business around Soltam, an Israeli defence contractor.

He was 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.

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.

They purchased the house on The Bishops Avenue in 1989, and later purchased the adjacent house in 1997.

The £60 million pair of "his and hers" mansions have an adjoining art gallery.

They also own a 120-ft yacht.

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.

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 a benefactor of the UJIA (United Jewish Israel Appeal), and was a Member of the Advisory Boards of CST (Community Security Trust) and UJIA, and a Trustee of Jewish Leadership Council.

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.

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.

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."

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.

The Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases opened in Sheba Medical Center through Poju and Anita Zabludowicz's donations.

Zabludowicz was a Director of Mustavaaran Kaivos, 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 also 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 2014, he was listed at number 75.

Backing an election campaign for seats in the European Parliament, he donated €8,000 to Alexander Stubb in 2014.

He is married to UK-born Anita Zabludowicz, who, in 2015, was appointed an OBE for her services to the arts.

Zabludowicz and his family reside mainly on The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead, a street in London referred to as Billionaire's Row, and have homes in Caesarea, Tel Aviv, and Sarvisalo, a small island in Finland.

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.

This purchase was listed as the 11th most expensive real estate deal in Israel in 2016.

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.

In January 2017, it was revealed that Zabludowicz has purchased a ₪25 million home in Neve Tzedek, a neighborhood of Tel Aviv.

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

The Sunday Times Rich List 2021 of the wealthiest people in the United Kingdom ranked Poju and Anita Zabludowicz 111th with a personal net worth of £1,500 million.

After graduation, Zabludowicz worked at BFG Bank AG in Frankfurt.