As Frank Lowy tells it, his journey to a British knighthood began with his love of the BBC, acquired as a young teen hiding from the Nazis after the invasion of Hungary.
He and fellow ghetto-dwellers would "huddle around a radio in a bunker" in Budapest waiting eagerly for the chimes of Big Ben to introduce the World Service.
![Frank Lowy cutting the ribbon at the opening of Westfield London with the then mayor of London, Boris Johnson.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170621050735im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/r/p/a/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwsfzh.png/1497683054128.jpg)
"It always gave us hope that help was on the way and that the war would end in our favour," the 86-year old said on Saturday, following the overnight announcement in London that he's been made a Knight Bachelor in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.
His early brush with the legendary British institution gave him a "deep and abiding respect" for the UK which implanted an ambition to eventually set up business there, he said. "From that time on I associated the British people with freedom and humanity."
Despite his lack of formal schooling beyond the age of 14, Mr Lowy and then business partner John Saunders built up their Westfield shopping centre empire from scratch in Australia in the 1960s, before expanding to the US, New Zealand and finally the UK in 2000.
In 2014, the Australian business was separated from the overseas arm, leaving Mr Lowy as chair of Westfield Corporation with retail assets in the US and Britain valued at US$31 billion. His personal wealth was estimated at $8.2 billion in this year's Australian Financial Review rich list.
Mr Lowy's knighthood citation highlights his "contribution to the UK economy" through its British investments, particularly Westfield London and Westfield Stratford City which are described as "Europe's two largest urban shopping centres." Planning permission has been lodged for another massive development in Croydon.
He has been active in philanthropy in both Australia and the UK, including founding the Lowy Medical Research Institute and the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Affairs. In Britain he has supported the Cabinet Office War rooms, the Imperial War Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
His community profile here was raised with his role as chair of Football Federation Australia for more than a decade until 2015, and he personally spearheaded Australia's bid to host the World Cup in 2022. That ended in a rare, devastating defeat for the businessman.
Mr Lowy declared himself "humbled' and grateful for the knighthood, credit for which he said "should be shared with the thousands of Westfield staff who helped contribute to the company's success in the United Kingdom."