Selim Khedouri Zilkha

Selim Zilkha, the youngest and last surviving member of the storied Zilkha banking family has died at 95 at his home in Bel Air, California, surrounded by Mary, his wife, and partner of 60 years, and family. His death was of natural causes, following a recent short hospital stay for a lung infection.

Selim was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1927, the youngest of seven children of Khedouri Aboudi Zilkha and Louise Bashi. His father founded the family banking and trading business, K.A. Zilkha, Maison de Banque in 1899. At one time, they were known as “The Rothschilds of the Middle East” with banks in Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria.

As his father expanded their business, Selim moved with his family to Beirut. In Beirut, beginning at age 4, he started to learn about business, listening to his father and uncle who came home to lunch every day. The children spoke in Arabic with their father and in French with their mother. At 8 years old, suffering from asthma he was sent to Cairo to the British Boys Schools where he was later joined by Ezra, his older brother by 20 months, followed eventually by the entire family. In 1941 with the German Army fast approaching Cairo, the family moved to New York (with elder brothers Abdullah and Maurice remaining to manage the bank).

In New York, Selim attended the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, entering as a senior and graduating at 14. He then attended Williams College from which he graduated at 17 due to a war-time accelerated degree program. In 1945, upon graduation, he was drafted into the Army and became a naturalized American citizen. He then joined the family business in New York where he became expert at trading gold and silver.

At his father’s urging, Selim opened a branch of the family firm in Paris, then in London. It was in Paris that he made the acquaintance of a young entrepreneur, Jimmy Goldsmith, who would become a business partner and lifelong friend.

In 1953, Zilkha, then 26, married his first cousin Diane Bashi, who was 17. They settled in London, where their children Michael, and Nadia were raised. After K.A. Zilkha died in 1956, Selim decided he wanted to run a business rather than just trade, and so when Jimmy Goldsmith purchased a chain of retail drugstores, Selim offered to join him in the venture. They eventually acquired an additional fifty nursery furnishing stores and launched a retail chain for expectant mothers and their children called Mothercare. Although Goldsmith soon left the venture to relocate to Paris, Selim built the company to great success using such innovations as an IBM computer for stock control, 100% British made product, limited suppliers, with no warehouse, and an open plan office. Selim took the company public in what, at the time, was the largest stock offering in British history, and in 1982 sold the company to Habitat.

Zilkha’s first marriage ended in divorce in 1962. That same year, Selim attended a dinner party where he was seated next to Mary Hayley. They were enjoying their conversation so much that Selim suggested they continue on after dinner to The 400, London’s club of the moment. They danced to “Moon River” and Mary remained his companion for the next sixty years. In 1982, Selim and Mary moved to Los Angeles, settling in Bel-Air.

In the United States, Selim decided to invest in the oil and gas business with his son Michael, as he said, ”Knowing nothing about it. I didn’t even know what a depleting asset was.” Zilkha’s friend, Kerry Packer, the Australian magnate, was an early partner but was eventually bought out by the Zilkhas. Selim pioneered the use of 3D Seismic for oil exploration so successfully that one point Zilkha Energy controlled the largest acreage position under lease on the shelf of the Gulf of Mexico. Once rival oil concerns caught on, competition became more intense and Selim and Michael sold the business in 1998.

They followed this success with Zilkha Wind Energy which became one of the largest suppliers of wind energy in the United States. Goldman Sachs became majority shareholder in 2005 and sold the company to Energia de Portugal two years later.

With his daughter Nadia, Selim invested in a California wine business. “Another business I knew nothing about!” Selim liked to say, eventually becoming partners in the Laetitia winery and the Nadia wine label. They sold the vineyard in 2019 and the remaining acreage as a real estate development in 2020.

In 2002, Selim decided to endow the Zilkha Neurogenic Institute at USC to research ways to arrest and treat Alzheimer’s, which his mother and eldest brother suffered from.

Selim loved to play games all of his life, golf, backgammon and bridge when in England, then tennis in addition to bridge once he moved to LA. Selim played tennis until he turned 88 and continued to swim and do exercises daily to his last living day.

At the end of August, Selim was hospitalized at UCLA with pneumonia. Although weakened, he returned home. On September 13, with friends and family present and watching as the ceremony was livestreamed, Selim married Mary.

Two days later, Selim entered palliative care and passed away.

He is survived by his wife Mary Hayley Zilkha, his children Michael and wife Nina, Nadia and partner Larry Stein, step-daughter Emma-Louise Hayley, grandchildren Lucinda Francis and husband Andrew, Daniela Liss and husband Harold, Julian Wellisz and partner Anna Walden and Daniel Zilkha and wife Janie and great-granddaughters Cecilia and Imogen Francis, Isabel Liss, and Genevieve and Marguerite Zilkha.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donations to the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at USC.