David Lowy, rock guitarist, aerobatics champion – and CEO of one of the biggest family offices

David Lowy isn’t your ordinary son of a billionaire. Granted, like some fellow net geners of billionaire families, he works for his family’s private investment group, which in the Lowys case is LFG. But Lowy is also the founder of The Dead Daisies, a very successful hard rock band. Not only that, Lowy is an accomplished pilot, having been a former Australian aerobatics champion.

But Lowy, who’s the eldest son of Frank Lowy, the founder of one of the biggest retail groups in the world, Westfield, might find he has a little less time being a rock star and pilot in the future. That’s because the family business has just been sold to a French property investment group for $24.7 billion.

How much of that money will go into LFG? Only the family know. But, if they don’t set up another investment group to manage that money then probably quite a lot – and that will create one of the biggest family investment houses in Australia, if not the biggest. Finding suitable investment opportunities for that chunk of money will be demanding and no doubt take up more of Lowy’s time given he’s CEO of LFG.

Lowy, 62, might have had a slightly less conventional career so far, but he’s been highly successful with his band and aviation pursuits. The Dead Daisies isn’t some hobbyist band set up by an offspring of a billionaire. No, it’s a well established hard rock band, playing to sell-out audiences in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. And The Dead Daisies attracts many topline rock performers to often play with them, including Richard Fortus, Frank Ferrer and Dizzy Reed from Guns N’ Roses, and Marco Mendoza from Thin Lizzy.

Here’s a performance clip from The Dead Daisies website – plenty of heavy rock on show. Lowy is playing the rhythm guitar.

Lowy also takes his piloting very seriously. He won the Australian aerobatic champion back in 1998, and still regularly performs at airshows flying a WWII Spitfire.  Not only that, he founded the Temora Aviation Museum, which houses one of the biggest collection of ex-military aircraft in Australia.

Does all this make Lowy a good CEO of a family office? Undoubtedly yes. He’s shown plenty of entrepreneurial nous in his career and that in itself is probably the best background for any CEO of a family office. And his less than conventional, but nevertheless highly successful background, shows he’s probably willing to consider a wide variety of investments – maybe even a rock band, or two.