James Hanson, Baron Hanson

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For similarly named persons, see James Hanson.

James Edward, Baron Hanson (born in Huddersfield on January 20, 1922 – November 1, 2004) was an English conservative industrialist who built his businesses through the process of leveraged buyouts through Hanson plc.

Lord Hanson and Gordon White (later Lord White of Hull) formed a partnership in the 1960s, whereby they founded a greetings card business. The two men also began buying other companies, in such diverse industries as fertilisers and bricks, which all sat under the umbrella of a listed entity called Hanson Trust. By the 1980s, the Hanson Trust operated in both Europe and North America, purchasing undermanaged businesses in sectors such as batteries, locks and safes. In 1983, he was created Baron Hanson, of Edgerton in the County of West Yorkshire, a life peerage, and sat in the House of Lords thereafter.

Lord Hanson's greatest deal was the 1986 purchase of Imperial Group, a British tobacco conglomerate with a diversified portfolio of underperfoming businesses. Lord Hanson's consideration for the transaction was funded entirely by selling many of Group's subsidiaries, leaving him with a business that made an operating-profit margin of nearly 50%. By the mid 1980s, he built a business that employed 90,000 people.

Lord Hanson developed a reputation as a corporate raider, which worked against him in a failed bid for ICI Group, a chemical group, in 1991. ICI hired Goldman Sachs to look into Lord Hanson's business dealings, and they found that Lord Hanson's partner, White, was running racehorses at shareholders' expense. Lord Hanson had purchased 2.8% of the firm, but backed down from the takeover.

He was well known for his support of ex-Conservative MP Neil Hamilton, who became famous for his involvement in the "cash for questions" affair in the 1990s.

Hanson was also an active "Eurosceptic", opposed as he was to Britain joining the Euro, and was a founding member of Business for Britain, an anti-EU organisation. He was also a member of the Bruges Group, which advocates a substantial renegotiation of Britain's relationship with the EU, or if that is not possible, total withdrawal from the EU.

He was at one point engaged to Audrey Hepburn, who later called off the marriage.

He died, aged 82, after a long battle with cancer, in his home near Newbury.