Who is Robert Sarver? Wiki, Biography, Age, Spouse, Net Worth

In January 2016, Sarver bought football team RCD Mallorca, at the time in the Spanish second division, for €20 million.

In January 2015, Sarver offered £20 million for control of Scottish football side Rangers Football Club, having had a bid of £18 million turned down a couple of weeks earlier. The second offer was also rejected, and Sarver ended his pursuit to buy Rangers.

A lifelong sports fan, Sarver’s quest to purchase an NBA team began with a conversation with University of Arizona basketball coach Lute Olson. Olson referred Sarver to Steve Kerr, a former player at Arizona and a 15-year NBA veteran, to assist him in buying an NBA franchise. In 2004, he purchased the Suns for a then record $401 million.

In 1996, he married Penny Sanders, a Kansas City, Missouri native; they have three sons: Max (b. 1997), Jake (b. 1999), and Zach Sarver (b. 2001). They live in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

In 1990, he co-founded the real estate company Southwest Value Partners with Millard Seldin. In 1995, Southwest Value Partners purchased the Emerald Plaza in San Diego. In 2004, his jointly owned real estate firm, Southwest Value Partners, sold the Emerald Plaza and two other San Diego office buildings to Santa Ana real estate firm, Triple Net Properties, for $274.5 million.

In 1984, Sarver founded the National Bank of Tucson (which he expanded statewide and changed the name to the National Bank of Arizona). In 1994, he sold the National Bank of Arizona, then the largest independent bank in the state, to Zions Bancorporation. In 1995, he acquired Grossmont Bank, one of San Diego’s largest community banks. Grossmont was also sold to Zions Bancorporation in 1997. In 1998, Sarver led Zions Bancorporation’s acquisition of Sumitomo Bank of California. In 2003, he became chairman, president, and CEO of Western Alliance Bancorporation.

Sarver was born in Tucson to Irene and Jack Sarver. Sarver is Jewish. His father was a prominent Tucson businessman, banker and hotel developer (the elder Sarver built the Aztec Inn, the Plaza International Hotel (now an Aloft Hotel) at Speedway and Campbell in Tucson in the early 1970s, built and operated the Tucson area Howard Johnson’s locations, and headed a local savings and loan). Jack Sarver died of a heart attack in 1979; Robert Sarver would eventually donate to his alma mater, University of Arizona, funds to its heart research center, which in 1998 was renamed the Sarver Heart Center in honor of his father. At age 16, he went to work for his father’s company, American Savings and Loan. Sarver is a 1979 graduate of Sabino High School in Tucson, and a 1982 graduate of University of Arizona with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. In 1983, Sarver became a certified public accountant.

Robert Sarver (born 1960) is an American businessman, co-founder of Southwest Value Partners, a real estate development company, and the owner of the Phoenix Suns and RCD Mallorca.