Jack Lyons (financier)

Isidore Jack Lyons (known before 1991 as Sir Isidore Jack Lyons, CBE; 1 February 1916 – 18 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in 1967 and knighted in 1973 for public and charitable services and services to the arts, but both these honours were rescinded in 1991 in the wake of his conviction. The British Prime Minister John Major wrote him a letter of consolation following the removal of his honours.

Lyons was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, the fifth of six children born to businessman Samuel Henry Lyons (1883/4-1959) and his wife Sophie (neè Niman; 1885-1971), both Orthodox Jews. Samuel Lyons had emigrated to England from Poland when still a child.

Samuel Lyons 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.

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