How Immigrants Drove Australia’s Business Success: A Fact-Checked Look

Iconic companies built by immigrants

Westfield (retail property) Two Holocaust survivors—Frank Lowy (born in Czechoslovakia) and Jeno Schwarcz, later John Saunders (born in Hungary)—started a small Sydney development in the 1950s and opened their first “Westfield Place” in Blacktown in 1959. That seed grew into a global mall powerhouse before Westfield’s international arm was sold to Unibail-Rodamco in 2018.

Meriton (apartments) Harry Triguboff—born in Dalian to Russian-Jewish parents and later a migrant to Australia—founded Meriton and became synonymous with high-rise housing (“High-Rise Harry”). Meriton is widely credited with accelerating the scale and professionalism of apartment development in Australia’s major cities.

Visy (packaging & recycling) Richard Pratt (born Ryszard Przecicki in the Free City of Danzig, now Gdańsk) migrated to Australia as a child and later led Visy. Under his leadership, the company expanded from a modest local player into a trans-Pacific manufacturing group employing thousands.

Kogan.com (e-commerce) Ruslan Kogan arrived from Belarus with his family in 1989 and founded Kogan.com in 2006, building it into one of Australia’s best-known online retail platforms. His migrant-to-merchant story is now a staple of Australia’s digital-economy playbook.

Moose Toys (global toys & entertainment) Manny Stul, born in a refugee camp in Europe and raised in Australia, transformed Melbourne-based Moose Toys into a billion-dollar global innovator and became Australia’s first EY World Entrepreneur of the Year (2016). Recent reporting places Moose’s revenue around the $1 billion–$1.3 billion mark, with global hits like Shopkins and Magic Mixies.

Greater Springfield (city-building) Engineer-developer Maha Sinnathamby migrated from Malaysia and masterminded Greater Springfield near Brisbane—the country’s largest master-planned community and often described as a “nation-building” project for its private-sector city creation.

Emotiv (neurotech) Tan Le fled Vietnam as a child and later co-founded Emotiv, a company commercialising EEG headsets that helped popularise consumer neurotechnology and new research uses. She was named Young Australian of the Year in 1998.

Crazy John’s (mobile retail) Mustafa “John” Ilhan migrated from Turkey as a child and founded Crazy John’s, which became a nationally recognised phone retailer and a symbol of early mobile-boom entrepreneurship.

Why immigrant entrepreneurship thrives in Australia

· A large, globally connected talent pool. With roughly one-in-three residents born overseas (and almost half of Australians having at least one parent born abroad), Australia continuously refreshes skills, languages, and market links that matter for trade and expansion.

· Open markets and deep consumer demand. From post-war retail to today’s e-commerce, migrants have repeatedly spotted underserved niches—then scaled them nationally and abroad (Westfield, Kogan, Moose).

· Institutional support and recognition. National awards and investor ecosystems (e.g., EY Entrepreneur of the Year) spotlight and fund high-growth founders, many of whom are migrants.

The bigger picture

Australia’s “business history” isn’t only big listed firms—it’s also the long tail of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) launched by newcomers: bakeries and logistics firms, software boutiques and construction contractors, medical clinics and export wholesalers. The names above are simply visible markers of a broader pattern: migrants have repeatedly converted personal displacement into economic dynamism, building companies that create jobs, taxes, exports—and, sometimes, entire suburbs and cities.