Safra may refer to:

People:

*Edmond J. Safra

**Lily Safra, chairman of the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation

*Jacob Safra

*Jacqui Safra

*Joseph Safra

*Safra A. Catz

Organizations:

*Banco Safra

*Bank Jacob Safra Switzerland

*Safra Group

*Safra National Bank of New York

*SAFRA National Service Association (formerly known as the Singapore Armed Forces Reservists Association)

Else:

*Safra, Lebanon, a village in Lebanon

*AL-Safra

Name	Safra A. Catz
Caption	Safra Catz, September 2010
Birth place	Holon, Israel
Occupation	President, Oracle Corporation

Safra A. Catz (born 1961 in Holon, Israel) is an Israeli - American manager, has been a President of Oracle Corporation since January 2004 and a member of the company's Board of Directors since October 2001. She also served as the company's Chief Financial Officer from November 2005 to September 2008. She has been at Oracle Corporation since April 1999. She became the non-executive Director of HSBC Group since May 2008.

Prior to joining Oracle, Catz was at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, a global investment bank, where she was a Managing Director from 1997 and had previously held various investment banking positions since 1986.

In 2009 she was ranked by Fortune as the 12th most powerful woman in business. She was also ranked by Forbes as the 16th most powerful woman.

Personal life and education

Catz moved from Israel to Brookline, Massachusetts at the age of six. She graduated from Brookline High School.

Catz earned a bachelor's degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1986. Catz is married and has two children.

References

External links

Official biography

Forbes 2005 list of The Most Powerful Women

Category:Oracle employees Category:American Jews Category:Israeli Jews Category:Wharton School alumni Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:HSBC people Category:1961 births Category:Living people Category:University of Pennsylvania Law School alumni

Lily Safra is a Brazilian-Monegasque philanthropist and social figure who attained considerable wealth after four marriages. Her net worth is estimated at $1 billion, ranking her as the 701st richest person in the world according to Forbes in 2009. She owns a $506 million house, "Villa Leopolda", in the French Riviera.

Biography

Safra was born as Lily Watkins on December 30, 1938 in Porto Alegre, Brazil daughter of Wolf White Watkins, a British railway engineer who moved to South America and Annita Noudelman de Castro, a Uruguayan of Russian-Jewish ancestry. She grew up in Rio de Janeiro. At the age of 17, she married Mario Cohen, an Argentine hosiery magnate. They had three children: Claudio (died in a car crash in Brazil ca. 1989.), Eduardo, and Adriana.

Lily and Cohen divorced in the early 1960s. In 1965, she married Romanian immigrant Alfredo "Freddy" Monteverde (formerly Greenberg), a leader in the Brazilian household appliance distribution business after establishing the Ponto Frio brand. He and Lily had one child, named Carlos. In 1969, Monteverde died by two shots from a revolver in his bed, an act that was officially declared to be a suicide. There were several irregularities about the case, including the fact that no gunpowder residue was found on Monteverde, that the shots were fired with the left hand while Monteverde was right-handed, and that it is extremely unusual for someone to shoot themselves twice when committing suicide. Monteverde's family has suggested he was murdered. Shortly after Monteverde's death, Safra produced a will leaving all his assets to her and, in concert with Monteverde's former banker, Edmond Safra, took swift action to cut off the rest of his family.

Lily and Edmond Safra dated for some time, but Safra's family did not approve of her and he declined to marry her. Instead, she married a businessman named Samuel Bendahan in 1972, but, reportedly under pressure from Safra, divorced him after about a year of marriage.

In 1976, she married Edmond Safra, a prominent Brazilian-naturalized Jewish Lebanese banker, and the founder, among other achievements, of Republic National Bank of New York. The couple divided their time between homes in Monaco, Geneva, New York and Villa Leopolda on the French Riviera. In a crime that attracted extensive media interest, Safra was killed in a fire that was determined to be arson. The case also suffered from a number of irregularities: security camera tapes from the night mysteriously went missing, Safra's entire security detail was off. Edmond Safra "apparently felt so safe here that he did not have his bodyguards stay the night when he slept in Monaco". The staff member convicted of arson (Ted Maher) has alleged that he was forced to sign a false confession, and Maher's wife has alleged that she was kidnapped when she tried to visit him. Shortly before his death, Safra signed a new will leaving all his assets to Lily. Lily Safra's lawyer answered to this accusation : "To say the trial of the one who murdered her husband was fixed, it's totally unbearable for her. [...] Monaco is not a barbarian country. You can't fix trials in Europe". The couple had no children together.

Philanthropy and art collection

Safra supports numerous foundations, organizations, and charities. Together with Edmond Safra and Nina Weiner, Safra founded the International Sephardic Education Foundation in 1977. She chairs The Edmond J. Safra Foundation and which supports medical research and humanitarian relief. The Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics has been established at Harvard, most recently she donated over $12 million to create a cross-disciplinary research laboratory on institutional corruption. She supports the American Red Cross and helped the Hurricane Katrina victims; she is on the board of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's research and a member of the Chairman's Council of the Museum of Modern Art. Through the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation, she helped found the Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities at the University of Haifa. The Foundation and Mrs. Safra also helped create the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences at the Hebrew University.

Safra ensured the completion of the Edmond J. Safra Synagogue in Manhattan.

In connection with the sale of furniture and art from her collection at Sotheby’s in 2005, Mrs. Safra donated $3 million to charities in New York she and her husband had supported for many years, along with a gift to Dillard University in New Orleans to help them rebuild after Hurricane Katrina

In 2009 she was honored by the Elton John AIDS Foundation with its “An Enduring Vision” award for her long-time support

She established the Edmond J. Safra Family Lodge, for patients battling illnesses, as well as their families, at the National Institute of Health near Washington D.C.

In July 2010, Safra donated 8 million euros to the Institute for Brain and Spinal Cord Injuries in Paris.

Safra is a Patron of Hope and Homes for Children in the UK and a supporter of its work for children in Romania

In 2010, she was said to be the winning bidder of Alberto Giacometti's L'Homme qui marche I which became one of the most expensive works of art ever sold at auction for £58 million; Sotheby's and Mrs. Safra declined to confirm or deny this. Including the buyer's premium the price reached £65 million (US$103.7 million).

Empress Bianca

In 2005, Lady Colin Campbell published her first novel, Empress Bianca, that she claimed was based on her own friends and cousins. In the book the protagonist is an "ambitious and mercenary" socialite from South America, has three children from her first husband, loses her son in a tragic car accident, loses her second husband who is shot by a hitman who makes it look like a suicide, divorces her third husband, and her fourth husband is a Middle Eastern banker who dies with his nurse in a mysterious fire in his apartment in the tax haven of Andorra. An apparent roman à clef the book was declared by Safra's lawyer to be "defamatory". King's College London, Honorary Fellow Honorary Doctorate from Haifa University Honorary Doctorate from Imperial College London Honorary Doctorate from Brandeis University

References

External links

Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation

Michael J. Fox Foundation For Parkinson's Research

www.fnih.org

www.memorialdelashoah.org

Wall Street Journal Donor of the Day : Mrs. Lily Safra

Category:1938 births Category:Living people Category:People from Rio Grande do Sul Category:Brazilian philanthropists Category:Brazilian Jews Category:Brazilian people of English descent Category:Harvard University people Category:Safra Category:Brazilian billionaires Category:Female billionaires Category:Fellows of King's College London