The heir to a banking dynasty over 100 years old, Edmond Safra moved with his father from Lebanon to Brazil to create the foundations for today’s Safra Group. Once he inherited it with his brothers, he continued to grow his family company into the giant it is today.
Yet, whilst other bankers are quite open about who they are (ok, maybe not the Rothschilds), Edmond Safra was always quite secretive, partially due to the numerous allegations of connections to criminal outfits that dogged his career.
Though damaging to both himself and his family company, these unsubstantiated allegations didn’t prevent Edmond from hosting thousands of parties at his Villa Leopolda mansion on the French Riviera. All whilst he remained a recluse.
Indeed, there are very few photographs of him on the internet, and he almost never gave interviews to the press, only stoking their curiosity, especially after the mysterious events surrounding his murder…
Ancestry
The origins of the Safra banking family can be traced back to the Ottoman Empire. As Sephardic Jews, the Safras were heavily involved in the Empire’s gold trade, facilitating Middle East caravans from their offices in Aleppo, Alexandria, Beirut and Istanbul.
When the Ottoman Empire fell in 1918 following their defeat in WWI, levels of antisemitism grew to new heights and much of the empire’s Jewish population left for other areas of the modern day Middle East.
The Safras were no exception.
Edmond’s father, Jacob Safra, moved from his home in Aleppo to Beirut. Continuing to work for Safra Frères et Cie., his family’s firm, in their Beirut office, Jacob eventually broke with his family and established Banco Jacob E. Safra.
Just prior to leaving Aleppo, Jacob met his cousin, Esther Teira Safra, the daughter of his father’s younger brother, who was 13 years his junior. Despite the large age gap, the couple fell in love and were married in 1920 in a synagogue in the Lebanese capital.
Using his position as a well known banker and recent immigrant (following a wave of Sephardic Jewish immigrants to Beirut), Jacob became the banker of choice to many of Beirut’s wealthy Sephardic Jewish families.
Managing their vast personal and business fortunes well and with the utmost discretion, Jacob soon became not only quite wealthy.
Early Life
It was into these circumstances where Edmond Jacob Safra was born into on August 6 1932. The second eldest of his parent’s eight children, Edmond got on particularly well with his brothers Elie (born 1922) and Morse (born 1934).
As was common for Jewish banking families for centuries prior, Jacob groomed his sons to one day take over from him.
Even from an early age, Edmond seemed like his father’s natural successor, being the only one of his siblings to take an interest in the family business from an early age.
A gifted student, Edmond attended the prestigious Alliance Israelite Universelle Hebrew school in the Wadi-Bou-Jamil neighborhood of Beirut, but found school life boring, repetitive and tedious.
He’d much rather be learning the banking trade full-time than only do so during the school holidays.
Recognizing his son’s interest in banking and lack of interest in formal school, Jacob allowed Edmond to drop out of school when he was 16 to come and work at the family bank.
Here, he worked in the precious metals and foreign exchange division of the bank, before eventually promoting him to the head of the division, not because of his last name, but because of his skill. No small feat for someone not even considered an adult under Lebanese law.
However, it was not to last.
The creation of the state of Israel and the Israeli victory in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (in which Lebanon had deployed troops against Israel) saw levels of antisemitism rise dramatically across the Middle East and many Jewish families feared for their safety.
The Safras were no different and quickly moved to Italy in 1949, where Jacob secured Edmond’s employment at a commodities trading company in Milan, with the hopes that Edmond would learn more about the European way of banking.
Constantly traveling as a result of his job, Edmond avoided the highly antisemitic Middle East as much as possible but traveled to new places: namely in the Americas where he and his family would later find their fortune…
Safra SA
Among those places visited by Edmond was São Paulo, Brazil’s main financial center and home to a vibrant Jewish community with roots going back to the settlement of the city.
Impressed with what the city could offer and its potential, Edmond informed the rest of his family about this and after careful consideration, the family moved to the city in 1952, following a wave of Middle Eastern and European Jewish immigrants to the city.
Over the next three years, the Safras ingratiated themselves with São Paulo’s pre-existing Jewish community and Jewish newcomers to the city – many of whom had set up shop as wholesale or retail merchants – and formally established Safra SA in 1955.
Established with the express purpose of giving the Safras a legal entity to finance
