Alfred Akirov

Alfred Akirov was born in 1941 in Iraq

Alfred Akirov was born on 5 January 1941 in Iraq to a Jewish family, the son of George and Mozli Akirov. The family immigrated to Israel, where his father set up a contracting company.

After his army service he joined his father's construction business and stayed in it for some years after his father died in 1967. In 1971 he opened a fur-like coat factory in Tel Aviv that grew into the fashion company Alaska Textile. Alaska merged with Sport Life in 1981, and by 1984 he had sold nearly all his shares.

In 1978 he founded Alrov, which has traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange since 1983 and works in real estate, technology and communications. In the early 1980s he took part in buying the airline Arkia and the Larom hotel. He helped rebuild the Mamilla area in Jerusalem.

He was named honorary consul of the Philippines in Israel in 1997 and headed the French-Israeli Chamber of Commerce from 2010 to 2012. In 2013 he set up the Alrov Fund, which supports higher education through scholarships and a real estate research center at Tel Aviv University. He is married to Hava and has 3 children.