The above image shows a newly emerged company, The Lyson Company, that began to advertise simultaneously and often side by side with the ads of C.E. Warren & Co. Ltd. As John Olson jnr. had decided to take his share of CEW & Co. following the death of his father, it was a precarious moment for the older company and for Charles Warren himself. The name of Lyson was well known in the Hong Kong community and W. Lyson (or Lai-sang), father of Cecil, having joined Hazeland architects, was in the building profession, like Warren. He could have decided that it was the moment to jump in to this market. His name is not listed among those of the twelve partners however. An indefatigable Warren cousin, who preceded me in the process of researching the Warren family history noted that the Lyson Company's ads in the SCMP matched Warren's on an almost daily basis from 1919 to September 1922 and then stopped. Certainly an uncomfortable rival at a time of extreme financial pressure on Warren, the company's sudden appearance, its short life and the reason for its disappearance remains a mystery.