Arise Sir Lou of Big Blue.
Lou Gerstner, the reclusive chairman of International Business Machines, the world's biggest computer maker, was awarded an honorary knighthood in Queen Elizabeth's annual birthday honors list on Saturday.
Gerstner, a US citizen, was given the award for services to electronic commerce and education.
He is credited with introducing the expression "e-business" during a speech in New York in 1997.
IBM, which got the name "Big Blue" in earlier days for an army of blue-suited salesmen and its blue logo, now makes server computers and industrial software that run much of the world's electronic commerce systems.
The company, incorporated in the 1920s, had earnings of US$8.1 billion in 2000 and annual revenues of US$90 billion -- the same as the gross domestic product of many countries.
A published author on education, Gerstner has pumped tens of millions of IBM dollars into into his "re-inventing education" scheme which provides technology and money for schools in eight countries around the world, including Britain.
Other US citizens to have received honorary knighthoods include filmmaker Steven Spielberg and oil tycoon John Paul Getty.
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