Billionaire Lily Safra, widow of banker Edmond Safra, dies at 87 | World News

Lily Safra, the widow of Edmond Safra who inherited the billionaire banker’s fortune, has died. She was 87.

She died on Saturday in Geneva, in keeping with a consultant for the Edmond J. Safra Basis who declined to supply a selected reason for dying.

Born Lily Watkins in Porto Alegre, Brazil, she married into the highly effective Safra dynasty in 1976. Her husband Edmond constructed banks in Europe and New York, after his household had moved to Brazil following the tip of World Conflict II. His brothers, Joseph and Moise, additionally created banking companies of their very own.

Edmond died a sufferer of arson in Monaco in 1999, the identical 12 months he bought some banking property to HSBC Holdings Plc for about $10 billion. His nurse, former Inexperienced Beret Ted Maher, later confessed to setting the fireplace.

After Edmond’s dying, Lily chaired the Edmond J. Safra Basis, in keeping with its web site, committing its sources to analysis into Parkinson’s and different mind ailments.

She married thrice, together with to Alfredo “Freddy” Monteverde, proprietor of the Brazilian equipment retailer chain Ponto Frio. She by no means remarried after Edmond’s dying. Whereas Lily and Edmond didn’t have youngsters, she had youngsters from her earlier marriages.