Pratt, Richard
PRATT, RICHARD
PRATT, RICHARD (1934– ), Australian businessman. One of the most successful contemporary Australian businessmen, Pratt was born in Danzig, migrating to Australia in 1939 from London, where his father, a retailer, had moved. In 1948 Pratt's father, Leon, opened a cardboard factory in Melbourne, which was developed by Richard Pratt after his father's death in 1969. Known as Visy Board (now Visy Industries), it grew into one of the largest producers of packaging and waste recyclers in the world. By the 1990s it employed 8,000 staff in a hundred plants around the world. Pratt, a powerful, athleticman, was also a notable Victorian Rules football player in his youth and was then an actor, starring in the noted Australian play The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. By 2004 Pratt was regarded as the second wealthiest man in Australia (jointly with Frank *Lowy), worth an estimated a$4.2 billion (US$3.5 billion). With his wife, Jeanne, he was the founder of the Pratt Foundation, one of the major Australian philanthropies. Pratt received numerous awards. He became a Companion of the Order of Australia (ao) and, in 2004, was named Australian Humanitarian of the Year.
bibliography:
R. Ostrow, The New Boy Network (1987), 200–4; "The Rich 200," in: Business Review Weekly (Melbourne, May 20–26, 2004), 115; W.D. Rubinstein, Australia ii, index.
[William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)]