[1] He was born Ernest Walter Schleyer in Austria and moved to the United Kingdom in 1938 when his parents, a Jewish gynaecologist and an Austrian mother,[2] emigrated to escape Nazi rule.
Subsequent to the bid, which resulted in success for Guinness, Saunders was charged (along with Jack Lyons, Anthony Parnes and Gerald Ronson) and convicted on 27 August 1990 of counts of conspiracy to contravene section 13(1)(a)(i) of the Prevention of Fraud (Investments) Act 1958, false accounting and theft, in relation to dishonest conduct in a share support operation (see Guinness share-trading fraud).
A series of appeals was finally dismissed in December 2002, although a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Saunders v. the United Kingdom declared that the defendants were denied a fair trial by being compelled to provide potentially self-incriminatory information to Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) inspectors which was then used as primary evidence against them.
While there was no suggestion that Saunders himself sought to or actually did profit from these offences in an immediate or direct manner, the allegation was that they were committed to increase the likelihood of their company's takeover bid succeeding.
[6] Saunders worked as a business consultant, including advising mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse from its early days until prior to its flotation.
Seed offered investments in a variety of fields including wine, property, oil and gas exploration through Ocean International Marketing, their sales subsidiary with offices in Rotterdam.