Ernest Saunders

Ernest Saunders

Ernest Walter Saunders (born October 21, 1935) is a former British business manager, best known as one of the "Guinness Four".

Personal life

He was born Ernest Walter Schleyer in Austria and moved to the United Kingdom in 1938 when his parents emigrated to escape Nazi rule. He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, was married in 1963 to Carole Ann Stephing, and has two sons and one daughter.

Professional life

He had a career in management with Beecham, Great Universal Stores and Nestlé before becoming Chief Executive of Guinness plc (now a part of Diageo plc) from 1981 to 1986. He was renowned for his ruthless cost-cutting efficiency, earning from his employees the sobriquet "Deadly Ernest".

Under his charge early in 1986 Guinness plc launched a friendly takeover bid for Edinburgh-based United Distillers plc, which was being stalked by a hostile bidder. This was effected by quietly boosting the Guinness share price. Subsequent to the bid, which resulted in success for Guinness, Saunders (along with Jack Lyons, Anthony Parnes and Gerald Ronson) was charged and convicted on 27 August 1990 of counts of conspiracy to contravene section 13(1)(a)(i) of the Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act 1958, false accounting and theft, in relation to dishonest conduct in a share support operation (see Guinness share-trading fraud). A series of appeals was finally dismissed in December 2002, although a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights declared that the defendants were denied a fair trial by being compelled to provide potentially self-incriminatory information to Department of Trade and Industry inspectors which was then used as primary evidence against them. This breached their right to silence.

While there was no suggestion that Saunders himself sought to or actually did profit from these offences in an immediate or direct manner, the allegation was that they were committed to make the company's takeover bid more likely to succeed. His board of directors at Guinness plc were not informed of, and had not sanctioned, his arrangements, which included indemnities for unknowable amounts. He had passed $100 million to the American Ivan Boesky to invest shortly before Boesky's prosecution and imprisonment for insider trading, and following that investigation Saunders' plans were revealed to the DTI in Britain.

entence and appeal

Saunders appealed against his sentence of five years in prison, and on 16 May 1991, the sentence was reduced to two and a half years. Lord Justice Neill said that he was satisfied that Saunders was suffering from pre-senile dementia associated with Alzheimer's disease, which is incurable. With full parole, Saunders was released from Ford Open Prison on 28 June 1991 having served only 10 months of his sentence.

A DTI report described him as a man who did "unjustifiable favours for friends and himself". [ [http://news.scotsman.com/guinnesssaga/Life-and-highflying-times-of.2288372.jp The Scotsman] .]

After release, he recovered from the symptoms which had led to the diagnosis. In an interview with "The Times" published in January 1992, Saunders said the symptoms were a result of a "cocktail of tranquilisers and sleeping tablets" he had been prescribed, and that he was making a good recovery. It is frequently asserted that Saunders procured his early release by pretending to have Alzheimer's, otherwise he is the only known person alive to recover from the disease.

Since then, Saunders has worked as a business consultant, including advising mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse from its early days until prior to its flotation. Charles Dunstone, the Chief Executive of Carphone Warehouse, said: "We were young guys who didn’t know what we were doing. He made us think about the questions we ought to ask or the information we ought to look at."

He was later appointed chairman of the executive committee of a US-based multinational petrol credit-card company, Harpur-Gelco.

Saunders also acted as a consultant to Seed International Ltd, a company based in the Cayman Islands. Seed offered investments in a variety of fields including wine, property,oil and gas exploration through Ocean International Marketing, their sales subsidiary with offices in Rotterdam.

References

Further reading

* Nick Kochan and Hugh Pym - "The Guinness Affair: Anatomy of a Scandal" (1987) ISBN 0-7470-2610-6
* Adrian Milne and James Long - "Guinness Scandal: Biggest Story in the City's History" (1990) ISBN 0-7181-3445-1
* James Saunders - "Nightmare: Ernest Saunders and the Guinness Affair" (Arrow Books, 1988) ISBN 0-09-974480-5
* Jonathan Guinness - "Requiem for a Family Business" (Macmillan 1997).
* [http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=80&id=1717882001 "Life and high-flying times of four partners in crime"] , "The Scotsman", 22 December 2001]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1723136.stm Guinness Four fail in fight for acquittal] , BBC News, December, 21 2001.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Ernest Saunders — Ernest Walter Saunders (geb. Ernest Walter Schleyer) (* 2. Oktober 1935, Österreich) ist ein ehemaliger britischer Manager, auch bekannt als einer der Guinness Four, da er Anfang der 1990er Jahre eine maßgebliche Rolle in dem Skandal um… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Saunders — is a surname of English and Scottish patronymic origin derived from Sander, a mediæval form of Alexander [ [http://www.allwords.com/word Saunders.html Saunders] . Allwords .] .People with the surname Saunders include:* Al Saunders, American… …   Wikipedia

  • Saunders — ist der Familienname folgender Personen: Albert Charles Saunders (1874–1943), kanadischer Jurist und Politiker Allen Saunders (1899–1986), US amerikanischer Comicautor und zeichner Alvin Saunders (1817–1899), US amerikanischer Politiker… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Ernest Macdonald — Ernest Albert Macdonald (* 1858 in Oswego (New York); † 18. Dezember 1902 war der 30. Bürgermeister von Toronto. Ernest Macdonald wanderte in jungen Jahren nach Brockville in Ontario ein und zog in den 1880er Jahren nach Toronto. Er wurde… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Ernest Amory Codman — Born 30 December 1869(1869 12 30) Boston, Massachusetts Died …   Wikipedia

  • Ernest Codman — Ernest Amory Codman, M.D., (December 30, 1869 1940) was a U.S. physician. [The middle name is sometimes given incorrectly. Amory is correct as shown by his works and Harvard documentation available online in image form.] He was an advocate of… …   Wikipedia

  • Ernest Lenard Hall — ] He has also served as a judge for the Cincinnati FIRST Lego League for two yearscite web |url=http://www.sme.org/cgi bin/find articles.pl? 07apm005 ME 20070409 SME #article|title=SME Member Supports DARPA Challenge|accessdate=2007 12… …   Wikipedia

  • Liste der Biografien/Sau — Biografien: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Guinness share-trading fraud — The Guinness share trading fraud was a famous British business scandal of the 1980s. It involved an attempt to manipulate the stock market on a massive scale to inflate the price of Guinness shares and thereby assist a £2.7 billion take over bid… …   Wikipedia

  • ENGLAND — The British Isles were unknown to the Jews until a late date, and the settlement of the Jews in medieval England was among the latest in Europe. It is possible that a small nucleus was to be found there under the Romans and that in the Saxon… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”