Obituaries
Lord Alliance, business leader and philanthropist dies aged 93
David Alliance modernised the British cotton industry, helped save thousands of Ethiopian Jews from persecution and was a generous philanthropist
July 30, 2025 14:09
David Alliance modernised the British cotton industry, helped save thousands of Ethiopian Jews from persecution and was a generous philanthropist
July 30, 2025 14:09Lord Alliance, textile industry giant, philanthropist and Liberal Democrat peer, has died aged 93.
Davoud Alliance, who later anglicised his name to David, was born in the Iranian city of Kashan on June 15, 1932 to Jewish parents Eliahoo, a commodity trader and money lender, and mother Sarahi.
After the government of Reza Shah Pahlavi ordered all Iranian families to take a surname, the family, including Alliance and four sisters, adopted the name “Alliance” in honour of the French charity Alliance Israélite Universelle, which ran the Jewish school he and his siblings attended in Kashan.
The family moved to Tehran in 1945, where Alliance began his entrepreneurial career in the city’s bazaars after leaving school to work for a textile merchant, expanding his employer’s customer base until he became “probably the highest paid teenager in the bazaar”, he later said.
At 18 Alliance travelled to Manchester, where his mother’s relatives worked in the cotton trade, and established a small textile business of his own: Banks & Lord.
He bought his first cotton mill in Lancashire in the mid-1950s with the help of a wealthy uncle and went on to modernise the British cotton industry’s out-of-date practices by acquiring struggling mills and manufacturers and taking advantage of cheap imports and synthetic fibres.
His acquisitions proved fruitful – the company’s fortune growing as each new mill was added to his portfolio.
After he discovered the relatively niche sector of mail-order clothing, thanks to his wife Alma, in 1963, Alliance bought a small Manchester-based mail-order house called JD Williams, which later became clothing catalogue retailer N Brown.
By selling modestly priced clothes to customers in the north of England and Wales, the catalogue brands proved immensely profitable, the company’s shares multiplying in value over the ensuing decades and earning Alliance more money than any of his other business ventures. But his other acquisitions were certainly lucrative too.
Alliance’s takeover of manufacturers Vantona, Carrington Viyella, Nottingham Manufacturing and the Scottish thread maker Coats Paton not only kept the dying companies alive but drove a profit at the new conglomerate Coats Viyella, a group that at its peak employed roughly 70,000 workers.
His winning streak came to an end with the 1991 acquisition of rival company Tootal, a move which, taken during a recession and in the midst of many emerging competitors, ultimately led to Alliance stepping down as chairman in 1999.
He spent many years involved in British Jewish community life, particularly the S&P Sephardi community, and raising money for the state of Israel.
When, in 1977, the government of Menachem Begin asked Alliance to assist in the rescue of Ethiopian Jews from persecution by Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Marxist regime, the businessman set up an exit route via Sudan, using the cover of a newly established cotton company in the region to bribe Sudanese officials and give Israeli agents an alibi.
His enterprise ultimately granted some 8,000 Jews safe passage from Ethiopia during the 1980s.
Alliance was appointed a CBE in 1984, knighted in 1989 and was later given a peerage in 2004, sitting on the Liberal Democrat benches until his retirement in March 2025.
As part of his philanthropic efforts, he donated to his former school in Kashan and funded the creation of an Iranian studies centre at Tel Aviv University, which was named after him in 2012.
In 2014 he donated £15 million to Manchester Business School, later renamed the Alliance Manchester Business School in his honour.
Alliance was married twice, first to Alma Joseph in 1955 and then to Homa Sassooni in 1982. Both marriages were dissolved. He is survived by his three children and eight grandchildren. He died aged 93 on July 18.
Lord Alliance, Born June 15, 1932. Died July 18, 2025
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