Harry Triguboff

Harry Triguboff
Image	; Harry Triguboff
Born	3 March 1933 (Forbes) Dalian, China (Forbes)
Nationality	Australian
Residence	Sydney, Australia (Forbes)
Occupation	Property developer
Known for	Founder of Meriton
Children	2 (Forbes)
Education	University of Leeds (Forbes)

Australian property developer; founder of the Sydney apartment builder Meriton

Harry Triguboff (born 1933) is an Australian property developer who founded Meriton, a Sydney-based group that builds and manages apartment towers.^[1]^[2] He built his first block of flats in the Sydney suburb of Tempe in 1963. Forbes says he has since built more than 79,000 apartments, mainly in Sydney and south-east Queensland, which earned him the nickname "High Rise Harry".^[2]^[1] On 20 October 2026 the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list ranked Harry Triguboff 116th in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$22.85 billion; Forbes lists the source of wealth as Real estate.^[1]^[3] In the annual World's Billionaires list published in 2026, Forbes had ranked Harry Triguboff 110th, at US$23.4 billion.^[4] Meriton companies have given money to both of Australia's main parties, and in 2023–24 and 2024–25 their largest donations went to the Liberal Party.^[5] In 2018 the Federal Court ordered Meriton's serviced-apartment business to pay A$3 million for manipulating TripAdvisor reviews.^[6]

Early life and education

Forbes gives his date of birth as 3 March 1933 and says he was born in Dalian, China, and came to Australia as a teenager. It says he studied at the University of Leeds, worked first in textiles and moved into property in the early 1960s.^[1]

Meriton

According to Meriton, Triguboff, then a clerk, built his first block of units in 1963 in partnership with Thomas Gluck: a two-storey walk-up of eight flats on Smith Street, Tempe. His second development, an 18-unit block on Meriton Street in Gladesville in 1968, gave its name to the company he registered that year.^[2] Forbes says his first apartment block was in Gladesville.^[1] Meriton completed World Tower, then Sydney's tallest residential building, in 2004.^[2] At its 50th anniversary in 2013, Meriton said it had built some 60,000 residential and serviced apartments, about one in ten of Sydney's apartments.^[7] Forbes says he was one of Australia's first developers to see the potential of apartment living, and puts the total at more than 79,000.^[1]

Wealth

Forbes lists real estate as his source of wealth and classes him as self-made.^[1]

Wealth history

Forbes has included this entry in its annual World's Billionaires list in 23 of the editions from 2001 to 2026 checked for this profile, starting with 2004. The table gives the rank and estimated net worth in each annual list.^[4]^[1]

Forbes estimates by list year
Year	World's Billionaires rank	Net worth (US$ bn)
2004	437	1.3
2005	507	1.3
2006	606	1.3
2007	407	2.3
2008	428	2.7
2009	468	1.5
2010	316	3.0
2011	323	3.4
2012	276	4.0
2013	276	4.5
2014	281	5.0
2015	277	5.4
2016	159	7.3
2017	153	8.5
2018	167	9.2
2019	156	9.2
2020	241	6.3
2021	195	11.2
2022	144	12.8
2023	137	13.1
2024	111	16.5
2025	104	19.1
2026	110	23.4

Philanthropy

In September 2011 he opened the Harry Oscar Triguboff Institute in Jerusalem. J-Wire reported that the institute supports immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union and Latin America, including with establishing their status with Israel's religious authorities.^[8] See International and political links.

Political activity

Australian Electoral Commission returns record donations to political parties from companies named Meriton (including Meriton Property Services, Meriton Properties, Meriton Apartments and Meriton Group) going back to 1998–99, to both Labor and Liberal/National parties.^[5] Recent totals recorded in party returns are shown below.^[5]

Donations from Meriton-named companies recorded in party returns (AEC)
Financial year	Total (A$)	Recipients
2020–21	250,000	All to the Liberal Party (federal and NSW)
2021–22	310,500	Liberal Party 230,000; Labor 80,500 (federal and Queensland)
2022–23	100,000	Liberal National Party of Queensland
2023–24	570,000	Liberal Party (federal and NSW)
2024–25	600,000	Liberal Party 500,000; Australian Labor Party 100,000

No donations recorded under Triguboff's own name were found in the data.^[5] Meriton's 50th-anniversary party in 2013 was attended by the former NSW premier Nick Greiner, the Lord Mayor of Sydney Clover Moore and state politicians.^[7]

Controversies and legal issues

In November 2017 the Federal Court found, in a case brought by the ACCC, that Meriton Property Services, trading as Meriton Serviced Apartments, had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct. Its staff had "masked" the email addresses of guests likely to leave negative reviews so that TripAdvisor's review prompts did not reach them. On 31 July 2018 the court ordered the company to pay A$3 million in penalties.^[6] ABC News reported that the conduct ran from November 2014 to October 2015, across 13 properties in New South Wales and Queensland. The ACCC said the maximum penalty was about A$14 million, and the case followed an ABC investigation in 2015.^[9]

International and political links

This section uses the same ten headings for every profile in this series. Only specific, sourced actions are included; company-level and foundation-level actions are labelled as such. Where nothing was found, the entry reads "No documented involvement found in sources checked."

Israel (investments, operations, donations, contracts, statements)

Triguboff founded the Triguboff Institute in Israel. Its chairman from its registration until December 2024 was Efraim Halevy, a former head of Mossad and of Israel's National Security Council. He was succeeded by Paul Israel, general director of the Israel Australia Chamber of Commerce.^[10] J-Wire reported in 2024 that Triguboff had helped more than 3,000 young professionals, including over 300 doctors from Russia and Belarus, move to and settle in Israel over the previous three years.^[10]