Michael Lewis

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Michael Lewis (born 27 January 1959) is a director of the South African retailer Foschini Ltd. He is also the founder of the Israeli biotech company ProChon Biotech Limited.[1]

The Lewis Family and Business Background

Michael Lewis is the son of the Stanley and Zea Lewis (née Theadora). His paternal grandfather, the Latvian-born Meyer Lewis, established a furniture company in Cape Town in 1934 which in 1946 was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.[2] For several decades Michael Lewis’s late father, Stanley Lewis, controlled the South African clothing retailer Foschini and the Israeli travel company Paltours (which was originally a subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust[3]).

Stanley Lewis moved from Cape Town to London in 1986[4] where he established the family’s investment vehicle Oceana Investment Corporation, probably best known in the UK for its attempted takeover of the Etam clothing chain in 1992.[5] Michael Lewis joined Oceana Investment Corporation in 1987 having worked as a fund manager in Edinburgh and London[6] and from that point jointly managed the family’s business interests with his father.

Today the Lewis family’s substantial wealth, which is held via trusts and offshore companies, is managed by Michael Lewis and his business associate David Sable, a fellow South African. Lewis and Sable run a London based investment advisory firm, Oceana Investment Partners, which manages the approximately £8 million of assets held by the family’s UK holdings company Oceana Investment Corporation as well as approximately £38 million worth of assets held by the Jersey incorporated Oceana Concentrated Opportunities Fund Ltd. The Jersey Fund has significant stakes in the African furniture company, the Lewis Group (founded by Lewis’s grandfather), the UK property companies Max Property Group plc and Berkeley Group Holdings plc, and the UK merchant bank United Trust Bank, where Michael Lewis serves as a director.[7] The Fund has also committed £5.9 million to Synova Capital, a private equity fund in which Poju Zabludowicz is the main investor.[8]

The Oceana Concentrated Opportunities Fund formerly invested approximately a third of its funds in the pro-Israel German media company Axel Springer, where Michael Lewis is still a member of the Supervisory Board.[9] The shares were purchased from Friede Springer, the widow of the company’s founder who is friends with Michael Lewis and with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.[10]

The Lewis family has supported other pro-Israel organisations in the UK in addition to BICOM. The family’s charitable foundation, the Stanley & Zea Lewis Family Foundation, donated a total of £193,239 to the United Jewish Israel Appeal between April 2009 and March 2011[11] and in 2011 pledged £3 million to the University of Oxford to fund the appointment of a Professor of Israel Studies.[12] Michael Lewis, who is a trustee of the family foundation, was a director of the United Jewish Israel Appeal from September 2001 to October 2007.

Michael Lewis is also chairman of the London-based think tank, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), having joined as a trustee in 2005.[13] The ISD was founded by its President, the veteran Zionist Lord Weidenfeld. It grew out of the Club of Three, an elite policy forum bringing together powerful figures from business and politics in France, Germany and the UK. The Institute jointly organises an annual event called the European-Israeli Dialogue with Axel Springer, the Jerusalem Foundation and the Portland Trust. It also sponsors research on ‘extremism’ and radicalisation’.[14]

BICOM - donor and former vice chair

Michael Lewis served as a director of BICOM between September 2006 and December 2007. During his time he was reportedly the organisation's vice-chairman and is known to have donated a total of £25,000.[15] He has said that he has had no involvement in BICOM since 2007, but has confirmed he remains a donor.[16]

Liam Fox and Atlantic Bridge

In October 2005, Defence Secretary Liam Fox flew to the United States with five newly elected MPs - Mark Harper, John Penrose, Brooks Newmark, Adam Holloway and Philip Dunne. In the register of members interests, all the MPs said their flights and accomodation had been paid for using a donation from Michael Lewis.[17]

In a clarification in October 2011 The Guardian said it had incorrectly stated that Lewis had arranged a trip in 2009 to a security seminar in Israel for Liam Fox's friend Adam Werritty. "Mr Lewis... remains a donor to Bicom but has never had involvement in Mr Werritty's travel arrangements".[18]

Lewis has donated £13,832 to Fox's defunct Atlantic Bridge charity.[19]

Affiliations

Connections

External resources

Notes

  1. ↑ ISD Board of Trustees, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, accessed 16 October 2011.
  2. ↑ Lewis Group, > Overview > History. Annual Report 2010 http://www.lewisgroup.co.za/investor/financials/ar/ar2010/overview/history.asp
  3. ↑ Haim Shapiro, ‘Tourist firm that goes with the Zionist flow’, Jerusalem Post, 18 April 1995, p.8.
  4. ↑ Obituary: Stanley Lewis, Jewish Chronicle, 18 December 2009, p.30.
  5. ↑ ‘South African Family Grabs A Secret Stake in Rejuvenated British Retailer’, Sunday Business, 18 March 2001.
  6. ↑ Trialpha Oceana Concentrated Opportunities Fund Report and Consolidated Financial Statements for the period 16 February 2007 to 31 March 2008, p.11.
  7. ↑ Oceana Concentrated Opportunities Fund Ltd Accounts made up to 31 March 2011, p.8.
  8. ↑ Oceana Concentrated Opportunities Fund Ltd Accounts made up to 31 March 2011, p.11.
  9. ↑ Axel Springer, Supervisory Board, http://www.axelspringer.de/en/artikel/Supervisory-Board_85415.html [Accessed 10 August 2012]
  10. ↑ ‘Axel Springer stake buyer is Liam Fox pal’, Evening Standard, 3 March 2006.
  11. ↑ Stanley & Zea Lewis Family Foundation Financial Statements Year Ended 31 March 2010; Stanley & Zea Lewis Family Foundation Financial Statements Year Ended 31 March 2011
  12. ↑ Lewis Group, > Overview > History. Annual Report 2010.
  13. ↑ The Trialogue Educational Trust Financial Statements for the year ended 31 December 2005.
  14. ↑ Institute for Strategic Dialogue ‘Counter-Extremism’, http://www.strategicdialogue.org/programmes/counter-extremism/
  15. ↑ BICOM Accounts made up to 31 December 2007, p.4.
  16. ↑ See note accompanying Rupert Neate, ‘Liam Fox took five MPs to Washington with donor’s money’, The Guardian, 13 October 2011.
  17. ↑ Rupert Neate, Liam Fox took five MPs to Washington with donor's money, guardian.co.uk, 13 October 2011.
  18. ↑ Liam Doward, Liam Fox's Atlantic Bridge linked top Tories and Tea Party activists, guardian.co.uk, 15 October 2011, amended 19 October 2011
  19. ↑ Rupert Neate, Liam Fox took five MPs to Washington with donor's money, guardian.co.uk, 13 October 2011
  20. ↑ Liam Doward, Liam Fox's Atlantic Bridge linked top Tories and Tea Party activists, guardian.co.uk, 15 October 2011.
  21. ↑ ISD Board of Trustees, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, accessed 16 October 2011.
  22. ↑ ISD Board of Trustees, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, accessed 16 October 2011.
  23. ↑ ISD Board of Trustees, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, accessed 16 October 2011.
  24. ↑ Liam Doward, Liam Fox's Atlantic Bridge linked top Tories and Tea Party activists, guardian.co.uk, 15 October 2011.
  25. ↑ Liam Doward, Liam Fox's Atlantic Bridge linked top Tories and Tea Party activists, guardian.co.uk, 15 October 2011.
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