Eyal Ofer

Eyal Ofer was born in 1950 in Haifa, Israel. His father, Sammy Ofer, was a Romanian-born Israeli shipping magnate and once Israel's richest man. Eyal graduated from Atlantic College, an international boarding school affiliated with the United World Colleges, based in St Donat's Castle, Wales. In his teenage years, he spent summers working on the family company's ships, loading cargo, scraping the boats' sides and repainting them, as well as traveling to international ports.

Ofer first moved to New York City in 1980 to start the family real estate business, and invested in properties on Park Avenue South, which he rented to law firms and public relations firms through his real estate company, Global Holdings. Over the years, he assembled a real estate empire having acquired a deep knowledge of ships which had made him comfortable with managing similarly tangible assets.

Ofer is also the principal of OMNI Offshore Terminals, the largest provider of floating production storage and offloading (FSO & FPSO) assets to the offshore oil and gas industry. Founded in 1990, the Singapore–headquartered company has delivered 23 conversion projects, 2 FPSO and 21 FSO.

He is married to Marilyn Ofer, and they have four children. They reside in Monte Carlo, Monaco. In 2008, they resided in west London and had a home in Herzliya Pituah near Tel Aviv. He also owns an apartment at 15 Central Park West, a building he developed located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City.

He is a frequent speaker at industry events, including the Milken Institute Global Conference in 2012, 2013 and 2015. Ofer also regularly attends the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos.

Eyal was one of the donors to the Gloriana during the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 2012.

In December 2013, Ofer donated £1.5m to the National Maritime Museum to allow it to keep two 18th-century George Stubbs paintings (Portrait of a Large Dog and The Kongouro from New Holland) in the UK after a public appeal by Sir David Attenborough.

In 2013, Ofer also gave a major gift of £10 million to support the completion of the development of Tate Modern, a museum of modern art based in London. As a result, the exhibition gallery on the third floor bears his name. The space has housed many significant exhibitions, including Matisse, Picasso, Edward Hopper and Gauguin.

Through his family Foundation, in 2013, he donated £10 million to Tate Modern, and £1.5m to the National Maritime Museum. The Foundation also made a donation of $5m to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2019 to renovate the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art.

In 2014, he received an honorary lifetime membership of the Baltic Exchange in London in recognition of his contribution to shipping in the UK and global maritime trade. Other recipients of this award have included the Duke of Edinburgh, Winston Churchill, and Maersk Mc-Kinney.

Its residential projects include 15 Central Park West, which was described as “the most powerful apartment building in the world” and “the most lucrative”, with quoted apartment sales of approximately $2 billion. It was the subject of a book published in March 2014 by Michael Gross entitled House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World's Most Powerful Address.

In 2016, Lloyd’s List named him number 10 in the top 100 most influential people in the shipping industry.

In 2016, Ofer was ranked 10th in the Lloyd’s List Top 100 Most Influential People in the Shipping Industry. According to Lloyd’s List, “the consensus view from those who know Eyal Ofer best is that he is a man who understands the markets with forensic detail”.

Through O.G. Oil & Gas, the oil and gas arm of Ofer Global's O.G. Energy division, Ofer has exploration and production interests in the Australasia and South East Asia region. In 2017, O.G. Oil & Gas made a partial takeover offer for a majority stake in New Zealand Oil & Gas, which resulted in it acquiring nearly 70% of the company.

Ofer has interests in technology companies through O.G. Tech Ventures, the tech investment arm of Ofer Global. O.G. Tech Ventures is a venture capital fund launched in 2017 focusing on early growth start-ups with disruptive technologies.

In 2018, Ofer joined the Advisory Board of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. The board is made up of a group of leaders in their fields from business, government, education and philanthropy including David Rubenstein, Gary Cohn and Mukesh Ambani.

In October 2018, O.G. Energy agreed to acquire a 40 per cent stake in Beach Energy’s Otway Basin assets off the south east coast of Australia.

In January 2018, the fund participated in the Series B funding round of Bringg, a delivery logistics platform for enterprises. This follows the fund's participation in the November 2017 funding round of Arbe Robotics, a Tel Aviv startup developing a high-resolution radar system for self-driving cars. It has also invested in enSilo and Secdo, companies which offer cybersecurity and data protection services, as well as ClipCall which brings technology to home maintenance and improvement.

In 2018, the “Eyal Ofer Galleries” are set to hold Tate Modern’s first ever solo exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s work, “Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy”, which will display the artist’s masterpiece “La Reve” (sold for a record £102 million) along with more than 100 “outstanding” paintings, sculptures and drawings. The exhibition is described by the Tate as one of the most significant in its history.