After the collapse of communism in central Europe, Schreier took the opportunity to acquire the Caterpillar dealership for Hungary. He became a passionate enthusiast for the country — whose current prime minister, Viktor Orban, called him “a true friend of the Hungarian people” — and went on in 1995 to purchase a stake in the Danubius group of hotels, of which he eventually owned 83 per cent. Over the following decade he expanded the Danubius brand across the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia, and finally brought it to London.  During the Second World War he served as a volunteer in the British Army, and on the formation of the Israeli Defence Forces in 1948 he became a founding captain in the Engineering Corps and fought in the first Arab-Israeli War. He remained an army reservist while building a civilian career as a mechanical engineer in road construction, and in due course starting his own contracting business, which built Israel’s first dam.  Ahead of the Suez crisis in 1956 he was recalled to military service — and when his tour of duty was completed he decided to take up an offer to join an engineering firm in England. The family settled in London, and four years later he established the business that became CP Holdings.  He maintained his interest in Israel through hotel investments, a controlling shareholding in the official Caterpillar dealership there, and a stake in Bank Leumi’s British subsidiary, of which he was deputy chairman until 2011. He also acquired control of the African trading arm of the Israeli conglomerate Koors Industries, and built a new business distributing agricultural and other equipment across Sub-Saharan Africa.  Bernard Schreier was knighted for his services to trade between Britain and Hungary in 2000. Publicity-shy and intensely hard-working, but possessed of a fund of jokes for all occasions, he remained fully engaged in his businesses until the end of his life. He was also an active philanthropist, and was particularly generous to University College London, which named a wing of the Law faculty after his son and business partner Gideon, who died in 1998. The family fortune was estimated to be £265 million.  In 2004 Schreier bought a hotel opposite Lord’s Cricket Ground in London and changed its name to Danubius Regents Park, flying the Hungarian and Union flags side by side. In his last years he moved from his north London home to live in the hotel, and it was there that he died. He is survived by his wife and daughter.  Sir Bernard Schreier, born March 28 1918, died June 1 2013
Sir Bernard Schreier, who has died aged 95, left his native Austria for   Palestine to avoid the Nazi threat before coming to England to become an   industrial entrepreneur and hotelier.