Background and career
Solomon Lew (born 22 March 1945) is an Australian businessman. His principal commercial activities involve importing apparel, toys and other goods into Australia from China and investments, mainly in retail companies. As a teenager, Lew supplied dresses to the Myer Emporium in Melbourne using his company Voyager Solo. In 2014 Lew built a ten per cent stake in David Jones after South African retailer Woolworths launched a takeover bid for the department store. Lew was formerly a director then chairman of Coles Myer until voted out by shareholders. He was also involved in an attempt to resurrect Ansett with Lindsay Fox following its collapse in September 2001. In 2008 he returned to the board of his public company, Premier Investments, and became its chairman. In 2016 he became the first Australian to be inducted into the World Retail Hall of Fame, which recognises the lifetime achievements of retail "legends".
Lew was born in Melbourne to Esther (née Windman) and Pinkus Lew (originally Lewkowicz), Polish Jews from Częstochowa who immigrated to Australia during the Interwar period. His father was active in Melbourne's Jewish community and was vice-president of a landsmanshaft for Częstochowa Jews. Pinkus Lew established a textiles business in Flinders Lane, but died when his son was 12 years old. Lew was educated at Mount Scopus Memorial College. He established his first business, Voyager Solo, at the age of 18. He studied accounting and commerce at night school.
In 1981, Lew's family office Parfit Investments Pty Ltd made a takeover bid for John Martin's, an Adelaide based department store chain. The following year, another of Lew's firms Specular Investments Pty Ltd made an unsuccessful bid for eyewear retailer OPSM. By 1983 Lew and controlled entities had obtained close to a 10 percent stake in Myer Emporium Ltd. In the same year he proposed a A$50 million takeover bid for the Australian branch of Cadbury Schweppes.
While chairman of Coles Myer, Lew involved Coles Myer in a deal with a private company Yannon Pty Ltd which ultimately lost Coles Myer A$18 million. An internal Coles investigation endorsed Lew's claim that he knew nothing of the deal, and a subsequent four-year investigation by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) ended with no charges being pursued. ASIC chairman Alan Cameron, acknowledged during the press conference to announce the outcome of the investigation that: "It is worth saying that the original loss suffered by Coles Myer was about A$18 million, and the recovery made by Coles Myer was in excess of A$12 million." Lew contributed to this 1996 settlement with Coles-Myer. Cameron also said that it was "clearly true" that Lew was not guilty of any breaches of the law. When asked if he believed Lew was innocent, Cameron replied: "of course." ABC Radio's PM program described the transaction:
"The Yannon deal was an undisclosed indemnity given by Coles-Myer to a shelf company called Yannon set up by CS First Boston. It bought shares in a company called Premier, a major shareholder in Coles-Myer controlled by then Executive Chair of Coles, Solomon Lew. It guaranteed Yannon against any losses in the share deal, eventually costing Coles $18 million. Coles retrieved $12 million in a later agreement between itself, Mr Lew and with other parties. The funding of the buying of its own shares, the apparent involvement of the chairman and the lack of disclosure raised serious governance issues for Coles-Myer, and ended with the replacement of almost the entire board of directors and the withdrawal of significant shareholder support." When Coles Myer's chief financial officer, Philip Bowman, resigned and revealed the details of the transaction it brought a great deal of unwanted public attention to Lew. Bowman's revelations prompted an investigation into whether the Yannon transaction broke the Corporations Law or other laws that lasted five years and gathered a quarter of a million pages of documents and twelve thousand pages of evidence. The ASIC recommended criminal prosecution against Lew in its brief, although the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, who had the final decision, decided not to proceed with criminal charges against Lew, Lew's advisers, or those working within Coles Myer. The Chairman of ASIC told the ABC:
"I think where the community would have had concern is if the community had felt that a transaction was beyond investigation in some way. This transaction was not beyond investigation."
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
