A Bazaar Life — The Autobiography of David Alliance, written with Ivan Fallon, (The Robson Press, £25) is David Alliance’s revelatory smörgåsbord of adventures, with lessons for success in the cut-throat world of business.
Lord Alliance (who, like the three Magi, hails from Kashan, in Iran) spun his own yarn of magic all the way to Cottonopolis, Manchester, saviour of this country’s fortunes through its textile trade. And Alliance became the king of that trade, establishing the biggest textile empire in Western Europe, with over 70,000 employees, and revenues of £2.5 billion.
Yet he started out with “no money, no contacts and only a few words of English — “How much?” and “too dear”. He says that a rabbi “humorously summarised business ethics to me as ‘Buy cheap. Sell dear.’” Alliance’s ethics today are far more ennobling and enabling: “Your reputation is your most important asset… There is no such thing as ‘can’t be done’… The key to good business is a satisfied customer.”
Enormous wealth, of course, brings access to the powerful — in Alliance’s case, British prime ministers, the Shah of Iran, Ethiopian dictator Colonel Mengistu, and various Mossad princelings, offering him considerable insights into the modern Middle East.
He discloses how, at the time of Israel’s establishment, when Jews were fleeing Arab countries, the Shah ordered that Jewish refugees, newly arrived from Iraq, should be given Iranian passports.
