Ted Arison

Ted Arison (24 February 1924 — 1 October 1999) was an Israeli businessman who co-founded Norwegian Cruise Lines in 1966 with Knut Kloster and founded Carnival Cruise Lines in 1972.

Early years
Arison was born Theodore Arisohn in Tel Aviv (in the then British Mandate of Palestine) to Meir Arisohn, a multi-millionaire owner of Meir Dizengoff and Company, and Vera Arisohn. Arison was a third-generation sabra, and was of Romanian descent. He studied commerce and economics at the American University of Beirut. and fought as a member of the Jewish Brigade of the British Army during World War II. After the British departure he later served as an officer in the IDF during Israel's War of Independence, eventually achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. From 1946 to 1951, he was manager of Meir Dizengoff and Company, a shipping company founded by Meir Dizengoff and acquired by his family from Dizengoff.

Business career
Frustrated by the lack of business opportunities, Arison wrapped up his business and moved to the United States after 1952. Arison took his family to New York in 1954 and moved to Miami, Florida in 1966. He created Carnival Cruise Lines in 1972 in which he made his fortune.

Later, he established the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts based in Miami. He brought professional basketball to South Florida with the forming of the Miami Heat in 1988, and established the philanthropic Arison Foundation in Israel and the United States.

In 1986, Ted Arison's condominium neighbor, Count de S.G. Elkaim (Vice President at E.F. Hutton & Company, Inc.), advised him to go public before the impending big correction in the stock market. Following his advice and guidance, Carnival Cruise Lines went public in the American Stock Exchange in July 1987, one month before the stock market top and the infamous crash of October 1987. (E.F. Hutton was one of the four underwriters.) No competition was able to raise money, and this gave Carnival a beautiful head start. In February 1989, Ted Arison awarded in the strictest of confidence the exclusive sale of the company at $30 per share to Count de S.G. Elkaim. The stock market recovery from the emotional shock on the 1987 crash was not able to absorb this transaction. Consequently, having Carnival in the stock market and the ensuing rally until 1999 catapulted Ted Arison to one of the world's richest people and was undoubtedly the best success story of his career.

Return to Israel
In 1990, he renounced his U.S. citizenship, in an effort to avoid estate tax in the United States and returned to Israel and founded Arison Investments. In 1997 he headed a consortium that purchased the controlling share in Bank Hapoalim for more than $1 billion, the largest privatization in Israel's history.

Family
He is survived by his wife, Lin and his children Micky Arison, Michael Arison and Shari Arison.

Death
At the time of his death in 1999, Ted Arison failed by approximately nine months to meet the requirement of being outside of United States territory for 10 years for the tax benefits of his renunciation of U.S. citizenship to be realized.