Lord David Alliance, CBE, a founding shareholder and former chairman of ecommerce giant N Brown Group and one of Britain’s foremost industrialists for more than half a century, has passed away aged 93.
As well as being the former chair of N Brown, Alliance also chaired Coats Viyella, one of Europe’s foremost textile companies.
Alliance was born in the Iranian city of Kashan in 1932. His father was in the wool and linen industry, and apprenticed him at age 13 into the grand bazaar in Tehran. At the age of 18, he travelled to Manchester, then still the centre of a thriving textile trade.
As described in his 2015 autobiography, A Bazaar Life, “six years later he bought a loss-making textile mill, turned it around in six months and went on to build the biggest textile company in the Western world. At one stage his businesses, including his mail-order company, N Brown Group, employed more than 80,000 people.”
Knighted in 1989, he was elevated to the Peerage in 2004, where he took the Liberal Democrat whip.
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Known for his significant philanthropy, particularly with organisations in the UK, Iran and Israel, Alliance was also directly involved in successful efforts to help rescue Ethiopian Jews and take them to Israel, negotiating directly with the then-dictator of Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam.
An Iranian studies centre at Tel Aviv University is named for Alliance, while the world-renowned Manchester Business School was renamed the Alliance Manchester Business School in 2015, “in recognition of Lord Alliance’s generous donation and his long-standing relationship with the University and Business School.”
Announcing the news on Friday night, N Brown said in a statement: “It is with great sadness that the Company has learnt of the death of Lord Alliance of Manchester CBE, at the age of 93. Lord Alliance was a life-long supporter of N Brown Group and served on the Board as a director for over 50 years prior to the Group being taken private in 2025.“
Steve Johnson, executive chair and chief executive officer, added: “Without Lord Alliance there would be no N Brown, an employer of around 1,500 people nationwide. Lord Alliance had a career defined by entrepreneurship, public service and philanthropy, and was a titan of British retail. He was a source of great wisdom for me and for so many of us at N Brown and it was a privilege to have worked with him. We will all miss him and our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with his wife, Lady Homa Alliance; his son Joshua Alliance, a Director of the Company; and their wider family.”
The Board and all colleagues of N Brown wish to express their gratitude for Lord Alliance’s extraordinary contributions to the Company. He will be remembered with great respect and admiration.”
A second statement from the S&P Sephardi Community, of which Alliance was an active member, added: “We send our deepest condolences to his wife Lady Homa Alliance; children Graham Alliance, Sara Esterkin and Joshua Alliance; siblings Tella Jebreel, Nigel Alliance OBE and Moshe Alliance. He was deeply loved and admired by so many in our community and globally. His loss will be profoundly felt by us all. We wish all the family a long life free from further sorrow.”
N Brown reverted to Alliance family ownership following the recent takeover by non-executive director Joshua Alliance’s Falcon 24 Topco Ltd. The funeral is understood to be taking place in Israel, while N Brown came into Alliance family ownership
