The Last Great Sephardic Banker: Edmond Safra's Empire of Trust, Charity and Philanthropy

Edmond J. Safra (1932–1999) Edmond Jacob Safra was a Lebanese-Brazilian banker born in Beirut to a Sephardic Jewish family from Aleppo, Syria, whose banking roots date to the Ottoman era — the family financed caravan trade, and his father Jacob founded the J.E. Safra Bank in Beirut in 1920. Edmond started in the family business at 16, working in Milan, then persuaded the family to relocate to Brazil, where he and his father founded Banco Safra. He went on to build Trade Development Bank in Geneva, Republic National Bank of New York (1966) — which grew into one of the largest US banks — and Safra Republic Holdings, its European private-banking arm. His guiding philosophy came from his father: "If you choose to sail upon the seas of banking, build your bank as you would your boat, with the strength to sail safely through any storm." In 1999, shortly after selling Republic and Safra Republic to HSBC for roughly $10 billion, Safra died in an arson fire at his Monaco penthouse set by his nurse, Ted Maher, who was convicted and sentenced to 10 years. Safra, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, suffocated with a nurse in a locked bathroom. He is buried in Geneva. Philanthropy and legacy. Safra was arguably the greatest individual benefactor of Sephardi Jewish communities worldwide — building and restoring synagogues from Manila to Kinshasa, Istanbul to Rhodes, supporting yeshivot, schools, and small communities that couldn't sustain services on their own. He co-founded São Paulo's Albert Einstein Hospital, built the Edmond and Lily Safra Children's Hospital in Israel, funded the Institut Pasteur and Weizmann Institute, endowed chairs at Harvard and Wharton, founded ISEF (1977) to fund thousands of Israeli students, and built Jerusalem's Safra Square. He left half his fortune to charity; the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation — chaired by his widow Lily until her death in 2022 — supports projects in ~50 countries, and institutions bearing his name include Harvard's Safra Center for Ethics, the Safra Center for Brain Sciences in Jerusalem, and the Edmond J. Safra Synagogue in Manhattan (opened 2003), which he envisioned as a Sephardic communal center. Descendants and the family today. Edmond and Lily had no children together, so the dynasty continued through his brothers Joseph and Moïse, who built Banco Safra in Brazil. Joseph — the world's richest banker when he died in 2020 — left four children: Jacob (who runs J. Safra Sarasin in Switzerland and Safra National Bank of New York), David (who runs Banco Safra in Brazil), Alberto (who left the group in 2019 after a succession dispute and founded ASA Investments), and Esther Safra Dayan (who sold her stake in 2025). Joseph's widow Vicky, with Jacob and David, controls the J. Safra Group — today spanning 230+ locations, 32,000 employees, and over $590 billion in assets under management, still entirely family-owned, alongside holdings like Chiquita and London's Gherkin tower. Roughly 50