Younes Nazarian, a longtime businessman and prominent Southern California philanthropist who served as chairman of Nazarian Enterprises, died on Friday. He was 91.
Nazarian was particularly well-known in Los Angeles’ large Persian-American community for his own achievements and the accomplishments of his family’s next generation. Nazarian’s youngest son, Sam, is the CEO of SBE Entertainment Group, which owns various restaurants and hotels around L.A. and elsewhere. The business school at California State University-Northridge is named for his oldest son, David, the founder of the investment firm Nimes Capital.
Younes Nazarian’s business career got a foothold in the United States four decades ago, when he became co-owner of Stadco, a Los Angeles-based tool and die manufacturer that served the aerospace industry. He was subsequently an early investor in the wireless technology company Qualcomm, later serving on the board of the early leader in making computer chips.
Nazarian, who was Jewish, was born to a single mother in a poor area of South Tehran in 1931, according to a family obituary, and was initially trained as a tool and die technician. Following the creation of the state of Israel he moved for several years to that country before returning to Iran, where he worked in infrastructure contracting and manufacturing and established a successful import-export machinery business. In the late 1970s, shortly before Iran’s Islamic revolution, he moved with his family back to Israel, eventually settling in California.
In recent decades Nazarian and his wife, Soraya, have served as Persian-American cultural figures and prominent philanthropists, donating particularly to universities and Iranian-American and Jewish groups in California and Israel. Nazarian also served on numerous boards, including for the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.
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