Auschwitz Survivor’s Daughter Becomes Billionaire

– Vera Guerin, whose late father Nathan Shapell survived two Nazi concentration camps and became one of California’s largest property developers, emerged as a billionaire last week after Toll Brothers Inc. agreed to buy her family’s Shapell Industries Inc.’s homebuilding business for $1.6 billion.

Toll, the largest U.S. luxury-home builder, will pay cash for Beverly Hills-based Shapell, the companies said in a Nov. 6 statement. The deal will more than double the number of California lots controlled by Toll to about 9,200, with most in coastal markets where vacant land is hard to come by.