Victor Blank
British businessman
Sir Maurice Victor Blank (born 9 November 1942) is an English businessman and philanthropist. He is the former chairman of Lloyds TSB and the current chairman of several educational and charitable organisations including the Social Mobility Foundation, UJS Hillel and Wellbeing of Women.
Background
Early life and education
Born on 9 November 1942, he was educated at Stockport Grammar School and then obtained an MA in Modern History at St Catherine's College, Oxford.
Career
In 1969, aged 26, Blank was made the youngest Partner in the history of legal firm Clifford-Turner (now Clifford Chance). At Clifford-Turner he specialised in corporate law, and co-wrote a textbook on mergers titled Weinberg & Blank on Take-overs and Mergers. He left Clifford Turner in 1981 to become Head of Corporate Finance at Charterhouse Bank (now part of HSBC), where he masterminded the buyout of Woolworth's. From 1985 to 1996 he held the posts of chairman and Chief Executive of Charterhouse. He was also a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland from 1985 to 1993.
In 1999, Blank was appointed Chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers which, during his tenure, became the UK's largest newspaper publishing group as part of the Trinity Mirror conglomerate.
From 1993 to 2006, he was Vice Chairman and then Chairman of Great Universal Stores plc, a conglomerate in the FTSE 100, which was separated into four different companies (Experian, Argos & Homebase, Burberry and Lewis Stores), the shares of which were distributed to shareholders.
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This entry incorporates text from “Victor Blank” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.