Angus Grossart, merchant banker, 1937-2022 - FT中文网
登录×
电子邮件/用户名
密码
记住我
请输入邮箱和密码进行绑定操作:
请输入手机号码,通过短信验证(目前仅支持中国大陆地区的手机号):
请您阅读我们的用户注册协议隐私权保护政策,点击下方按钮即视为您接受。
FT商学院

Angus Grossart, merchant banker, 1937-2022

A financier who made his influence felt in both takeover battles and Scottish cultural life

Sir Angus Grossart, merchant banker and patron of the arts, was for more than half a century an irresistible force in Scottish public life.

He described himself, half in jest, as a member of the “Scotia Nostra”, a man who wielded great influence: first through Noble Grossart, the boutique investment bank active in several epic UK takeover battles in the 1980s, including the “whisky wars” involving Guinness and Distillers.

The banker was a ubiquitous string-puller in the cultural world. He chaired or squatted on the board of all the major museums and galleries in Scotland, chaired a private auction house (Lyon & Turnbull), and contributed to numerous philanthropic causes. “Angus was a Renaissance man,” said Sir Ewan Brown, his long-time partner at Noble Grossart, “but he was also a street fighter when required.”

One of three sons of a Lanarkshire tailor, Grossart, who has died aged 85, claimed his first business experience was selling reject factory toffee on a street stall. A junior golfing champion, he studied law at Glasgow University but soon found the bar to be “a little cloistered”.

In 1969, he co-founded Noble Grossart with Sir Iain Noble, a Scottish landowner and Gaelic language activist. Noble soon left with a half-a-million-pound buyout, but Angus retained the name, turning an initial £30,000 investment into well over £300mn

During the 1970s, the bank prospered through word of mouth and patient growth, driven partly by the discovery of North Sea oil, which revived animal spirits in Scotland. Grossart took a lucrative stake in the Wood Group, the oil services firm, and backed entrepreneurs such as Kwik-Fit’s Sir Tom Farmer, Stagecoach’s Sir Brian Souter and banker Benny Higgins. 

Grossart never met a title he did not like, a source of trouble in 2018 when he accepted the Medal of Pushkin for services to the arts from Vladimir Putin. He reluctantly agreed to hand it back after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As someone who loved dressing up, his great regret was that, though awarded a knighthood, he failed to make the Order of the Thistle — the equivalent in chivalry of England’s Order of the Garter. The explanation probably lies in the sorry saga of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

In 1981, when I first met him as a cub reporter on the Scotsman, Grossart led opposition to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank’s takeover of the Royal Bank. The “backwoodsman” (and they were all men) saw off the bid, arguing it would turn Scotland into a branch economy of the UK.

Two decades later, the Royal Bank launched an audacious takeover of the larger NatWest bank. There followed breakneck growth under Fred “The Shred” Goodwin and the calamitous implosion of RBS in the 2008 global financial crisis. Grossart, vice-chair, got out just in time in 2005, but like a generation of Scottish businessmen who packed the RBS board, his hard-earned reputation for prudence never quite recovered. 

Noble Grossart’s heyday was over, a victim of both Big Bang deregulation which favoured capital-rich international investment banks and Grossart’s reluctance to offer equity to high-performing employees. His parsimony was legendary. “At the end of the RBS board meeting, Angus would help himself to two Havana cigars, in addition to the one he was smoking,” recalled Sir George Mathewson, former chief executive and chairman. 

Sir Angus outside Pitcullo Castle, his restored rural retreat in Fife, in 1991

But his generosity of spirit was notable, too. He was passionate about Scottish culture and history, from Sir Walter Scott to the Glasgow aesthetic movement, populating his private collection at home in Edinburgh and at Pitcullo Castle, a restored rural retreat in Fife.

Sir Jonathan Mills, former director of the Edinburgh Festival, said Grossart skilfully combined business acumen with an eye for the visual arts and a deep knowledge of his subject. His greatest triumph was perhaps as head of the Burrell Renaissance in Glasgow. He donated £1mn to a £66mn restoration of the eponymous museum and successfully pleaded for a change in the will (and the law), allowing the former Scottish shipping tycoon’s eclectic private collection to tour abroad. 

This was Scotland in his own image: confident, outward-looking and determined to leverage its heritage. He celebrated this tradition in Gleneagles every December at “Scotland International”, a private gathering of 60 prominent figures from academia, the arts, business and the odd retired spy. Politicians were not welcome. “I belong to two parties,”  he liked to say, “the Grossart party and the dinner party.”

Grossart never spoke on the vexed question of Scottish independence or the SNP’s record in power, but privately bemoaned the stifling of initiative and the “conspicuous” absence of non-political voices in contemporary Scotland. “Many follow, few lead,” he concluded, wistfully.

版权声明:本文版权归FT中文网所有,未经允许任何单位或个人不得转载,复制或以任何其他方式使用本文全部或部分,侵权必究。

欧洲病夫?德国企业老板针对高病假率发出警告

一项研究称,如果不是因为病假率高于平均水平,德国经济去年将增长0.5%,而非收缩0.3%。

朝鲜向俄派兵后,韩国考虑直接援乌武器

韩国认为,朝鲜向俄派兵和可能的俄朝技术转让对韩国的安全构成直接威胁。

再次陷入危机的大众汽车能走上改革之路吗?

欧洲最大的汽车制造商正与工人和政界人士交战,试图渡过痛苦的电动汽车转型期。

哈里斯的另一个大选对手:通货膨胀

美国选民对高昂生活成本的不满可能决定下周谁将赢得白宫。

Lex专栏:Meta和微软通过季度理智检查

科技巨头今天吹捧真正的胜利,以证明明天的巨额投资是合理的。投资者对此是支持的,但程度有限。

FT社评:英国工党预算——雄心勃勃,前景不明

财政大臣蕾切尔•里夫斯现在必须兑现她的投资计划,否则税收还将进一步增加。
设置字号×
最小
较小
默认
较大
最大
分享×