Jack Lyons

Isidore Jack Lyons (1 February 1916 – 18 February 2008), known until 1991 as Sir Isidore Jack Lyons, CBE, was a British financier.

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 University of York, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Opera House among others.

Lyons had been appointed a 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in 1967 and knighted in 1973 for public and charitable services and services to the arts, but both these honours were rescinded in 1991 in the wake of his conviction. 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 Samuel Henry Lyons (1883/4–1959) and his wife Sophie (née Niman; 1885–1971), both Orthodox Jews. Samuel Lyons had emigrated to England from Poland when still a child. 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.

Returning to Leeds in 1945 he and 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 & 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. and was fined £3 million plus £1 million prosecution costs.

British prime minister John Major wrote to Lyons after revoking Lyons' knighthood in 1991: "It was painful for me to have to recommend that this be done, and I would not have inflicted this on you lightly. But the rules on forfeiture and the precedents left me, I regret, no alternative. May I assure you that the service which won you the honours in the first place is still appreciated and will never be forgotten." The couple's first child was born in Canada, and they moved to England at the end of World War II; they later had two sons and two daughters. Lyons suffered from bladder cancer and heart problems in his last years, which were spent in Canada, Florida, and Switzerland. His brother Bernard died a few weeks after him at his home in Buckinghamshire, England, in April 2008 aged 95.