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Isidore Jack Lyons (officially known as Sir Isidore Jack Lyons CBE before 1991; 1 February 191618 February 2008) was a British financier and philanthropist. After building up a substantial retail business with his brother Bernard Lyons (1913-2008), he was charged in 1987 in the Guinness share-trading fraud. He was convicted and was heavily fined. Subsequent judgments from the European Court of Human Rights held that his trial was not fair. However, the convictions of Lyons and the other members of the Guinness Four were upheld by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and the House of Lords. Lyons was a significant philanthropist to the arts in Britain for many decades, donating to the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Opera House among others. Lyons had been awarded the CBE in 1967 and knighted in 1973 for public and charitable services and services to the arts, but both these honours were rescinded in 1991 in the wake of his conviction.〔Richard Duce. "Loss of Knighthood the final indignity for Lyons.", ''The Times'', London, 28 March 1991.〕 The British Prime Minister John Major wrote him a letter of consolation following the removal of his honours.〔 ==Success in business== Lyons was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, the fifth of six children born to businessman and Orthodox Jew Samuel Henry Lyons (1883/4-1959) and his wife Sophie (neè Niman) (1885-1971). Lyons's father had emigrated to England from his native Poland when still a child.〔 Lyons's father had established a men's clothing business, Alexandre. The company had a factory and retail shops.〔 Lyons attended Leeds Grammar School, leaving school at the age of 16, and later moved to the United States to study business at Columbia University. While there, war was declared and Lyons could not return to the UK so he enlisted in the Canadian army but because of his poor eyesight, he was confined to working in the Board of Trade. He met his future wife, singer Roslyn Rosenbaum, in Canada, and, in 1944, he became an assistant director of the country's Prices and Trade Board.〔(Obituary in ''The Scotsman'' )〕 Returning to Leeds in 1945 he, along with his brother Bernard, contributed considerably to the growth of the family business with the expansion of branches and the development of a lucrative export division during the early post-war period. This enabled the business to grow rapidly into a large conglomerate of companies called United Drapery Stores, or UDS. By the 1960s, UDS Group had succeeded in taking the lead as the United Kingdom's top retailer, with a 1,300-strong empire of retail shops. Businesses within the UDS conglomerate included: Richard Shops, Allders of Croydon, John Collier, Timpsons, Alexandre Stores, John Blundell Credit Company, John Myers catalogue mail order business, Brooks Brothers, Peter Pell, Arding and Hobbs and Whiteleys department stores, Fifty Shilling Tailors and other department and duty-free stores. The number of men's suits sold in all UDS menswear shops in the year ending January 1967 was 1,119,000. Within Allders alone growth continued throughout the 1970s to such an extent that in 1976 it became the third largest department store in the country, beaten only by Harrods and Selfridges. Meanwhile, the UDS Group had entered a new retail arena, that of the duty-free shop, when it acquired the licence to open and operate the shop at London's Heathrow airport. Attached to its Allders department store division, and later operated as Allders International, the UDS Group rapidly built up its network of duty-free shops around the world. In 1983, the UDS Group was sold to Hanson plc. With a mutual interest in musical endeavours, Lyons became acquainted with the Conservative Party Prime Minister Edward Heath, and remained close to his successor as Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher. Lyons campaigned politically for lower rates of taxation and for continued state support of the arts.〔 In 1980 Lyons resigned from UDS and became a senior advisor to Bain & Company, the American management consultants.〔 Lyons political connections were valuable to Bain, and he worked as a business consultant and lobbyist in the early 1980s.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jack Lyons (financier)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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