[8] In his teenage years, he spent summers working on one of his family's ships, loading cargo, scraping the boats' sides and repainting them, as well as traveling to international ports.

[11] In 2014, he received an honorary lifetime membership of the Baltic Exchange in London in recognition of his contribution to shipping in the UK and global maritime trade.

[24] Ofer first moved to New York City in 1980 to start the family real estate business, and invested in properties on Park Avenue South, which he rented to law firms and public relations firms through his real estate company, Global Holdings.

[5][8] Over the years, he assembled a real estate empire, having acquired a deep knowledge of ships which had made him comfortable with managing similarly tangible assets.

[28][29] It was the subject of a book published in March 2014 by Michael Gross entitled House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World's Most Powerful Address.

[30] They also include the development at The Greenwich Lane (in partnership with the Rudin family - formerly the site of Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center), together with the redevelopment of 18 Gramercy Park South, 520 Park Avenue and 50 United Nations Plaza (all in partnership with Zeckendorf Development).

[8] He is the chairman of Zodiac Group, a privately held London-based[36] ship owning and chartering (i.e. leasing) company with a fleet of more than 180 vessels.

According to Lloyd’s List, "the consensus view from those who know Eyal Ofer best is that he is a man who understands the markets with forensic detail".

Energy division, he has exploration and production interests in South East Asia and in Australasia, including a 70% majority stake in New Zealand Oil & Gas (NZOG), acquired in 2017.

Venture Partners $400 million Fund II, continuing his focus on early growth stage investments in software tech start-ups.

[53] Ofer is listed among the top 200 collectors in the world of contemporary, modern, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art by ARTnews.

He gave £1.5 million to the National Maritime Museum to allow it to keep two 18th-century George Stubbs paintings (Portrait of a Large Dog and The Kongouro from New Holland) in the UK after a public appeal by Sir David Attenborough.

[6][56][57][58] The Foundation also made a donation of $5 million to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2019 to renovate the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art,[59] which reopened as the Eyal Ofer Pavilion in May 2023 with the first retrospective of Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti to be shown in Israel.

[60] Ofer is a supporter of artistic, educational and cultural institutions – including the Tate Modern and the National Maritime Museum in the UK and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art – through the Eyal & Marilyn Ofer Family Foundation, which continues his family's philanthropic tradition.