Sir Victor Sassoon

Sir Ellice Victor Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, GBE (20 December 1881 – 13 August 1961) was a businessman and hotelier from the wealthy Baghdadi Jewish Sassoon merchant and banking family.

Sir Ellice Victor Elias Sassoon was born December 30, 1881 in Naples (Italy) while his family was en route to India. He was raised in England where he attended Harrow and Trinity College (Cambridge University). He was from a Baghdadi Jewish family who had made their fortune in the opium business. The family also had large holdings in the Indian cotton industry. Sir Victor served in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War. He survived a plane crash in 1916 and sustained leg injuries that plagued him for the rest of his life. When his father died in 1924, Victor inherited his title and became 3rd Baronet of Bombay. He moved to India, where he managed his family’s textile mills and served in the Indian Legislative Assembly.

In the 1920s and 1930s, he transferred much of his wealth from India to Shanghai (China) and contributed to a real estate boom there by investing millions of US dollars in the local economy. Sir Victor frequently traveled worldwide for business and pleasure and divided his time between Poona (India) and Shanghai. He acquired the Cathay Land Company, the Cathay Hotel Company and at least 50 other companies. Sassoon built the Cathay Hotel (now the Peace Hotel) in 1929, and other large hotels, office buildings and residences, many in The Bund, a waterfront area in central Shanghai (including Hamilton House, Metropole Hotel and Embankment). At one time, he owned over 1,800 properties there. Sassoon endeavored to protect Western interests in the Orient and helped European Jews survive in the Shanghai Ghetto.

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