Maurice Alter

Early life and career

Maurice Alter was born at Szedliszcz in eastern Poland, to parents Joseph and Brachell Alter.^[1] He arrived in Australia as a displaced person in 1939, settling in Melbourne's inner suburbs. He studied electrical engineering by correspondence, later taking on a job selling real estate while on night shift as a maintenance technician in a textile factory. Alter made his first real estate investment during the mid-1950s through the purchase of two shops and a bank in Kew.^[2]

He partnered with George Herscu in the late 1950s, and they began building shops around Melbourne's booming outer-suburbs.^[3] Their first major development was the Forest Hill Shopping Centre in partnership with a consortium lead by Paul Fayman. The centre opened in 1964 and proved to be a highly-successful venture, marked the beginning of a long-standing partnership between the developers. That year, they consolidated their interests as the Masaga Group.^[4][5]

Though Masaga was a little-known company during the 1960s, it reportedly built hundreds of individual shops and shopping centres around the greater Melbourne area and interstate.^[6] The particularly built large supermarkets which were leased to national chains like Coles. Masaga also developed residential and industrial land and operated various export abattoirs, hotels, theatres and bowling alleys.^[5]

Masaga went public in 1969 through a strategic reverse takeover, transforming a relatively-obscure finance company into a development group known as Hanover Holdings – thus avoiding the regulatory complexities of an IPO.^[7][8] Alter lead Hanover Properties: a principal subsidiary which developed and managed property for retention as permanent investments.^[9][10] Hanover soon became a prominent name in corporate Australia, profiting immensely during the early-1970s real estate boom.^[11] The company’s success during this period laid foundation for Maurice Alter’s later billionaire wealth. By 1979, the Alter-Herscu-Fayman partnership moved to privatise and dissolve Hanover.^[12] Alter retained a significant portfolio of commercial and industrial land, forming the basis of a new venture: Pacific Shopping Centres – which developed numerous large shopping complexes mainly in Victoria throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.^[13][14]

Death

Maurice Alter died aged 93, on 13 April 2018, and is buried at the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha. The Pacific Group remains a family business.^[15]

Forest Hills Shopping Centre (Forest Hill Chase)

Masaga Group & Hanover Holdings

Pacific Shopping Centres