By Ian Fraser The Herald August 27th, 2007 Gordon Brown’s environmental policies have been attacked as a “cynical exercise in window-dressing”, motivated more by a desire to raise revenues than a genuine attempt to persuade taxpayers to alter their behaviour, by accountants and business advisers Campbell Dallas. Bruce Wilson, tax partner at Glasgow-based Campbell Dallas, [...]
By Ian Fraser The Herald August 27th, 2007 Burness has become Scotland’s second most profitable law firm measured by profits per equity partner. The Edinburgh and Glasgow-based commercial firm leapfrogged its larger Scottish rivals, including McGrigors, Maclay Murray & Spens, Dundas & Wilson and Brodies, by increasing profits per equity partner to £361,000. The only [...]
By Ian Fraser Sunday Herald Business Comment August 26th, 2007 PRIVATE EYE likes to call the DTI the “Department of Timidity and Inaction” because of its persistent leniency towards big business. Following its announcement last week that it wants to lift price controls on business banking, thus letting Britain’s big four banks off the hook [...]
By Ian Fraser The Herald August 20th, 2007 Another senior Scottish lawyer has added his voice to the crescendo of calls for Scotland’s legal establishment to fall into line with that in England and Wales over the deregulation of the legal profession. Malcolm McPherson, senior partner of Edinburgh-based HBJ Gateley Wareing, warned that unless the [...]
August 18th, 2007 THE latest scapegoat for the market turmoil last week, which saw billions wiped off equity values as fear and loathing gripped Wall Street and the Square Mile, is the ratings agencies. Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch were fingered for misleading investors by giving the “all clear” to what were, in fact, [...]
By Ian Fraser The Herald August 13th, 2007 It’s a scenario that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. An aspiring director of “Big Four” accountancy firm Deloitte was allowed to bring both her mother and young baby along to the “assessment centre” while on maternity leave. Throughout the two-day session, designed to assess whether [...]
By Ian Fraser The Sunday Times August 12th, 2007 When Benny Higgins announced that he was defecting from the Royal Bank of Scotland to HBOS in January 2006, one analyst said: “It’s a bit like a player transferring from Rangers to Celtic. It just doesn’t happen.” In some ways the two leading Scottish banks are [...]
By Ian Fraser and Ruairi O’Kane The Sunday Times August 12th, 2007 John Lowrie Morrison, the artist renowned for colourful Hebridean landscapes, has been drafted in to reinvigorate the look of Thai-owned Scotch whisky Balblair, write Ian Fraser and Ruairi O’Kane. The brand’s owners, Inver House Distillers, believe Morrison’s input will help reinvigorate the image [...]
By Ian Fraser The Sunday Times August 12th, 2007 SIR DAVID MURRAY’s Premier Property Group has shrugged off fears of a commercial property downturn with an 18% rise in pre-tax profits to £12.2 million in the year to January, writes Ian Fraser. PPG, part owned by Sir Angus Grossart’s Noble Grossart Investments and Bank of [...]
By Ian Fraser The Herald August 6th, 2007 A wedge has been driven between Scotland’s largest law firms and their regulator, the Law Society of Scotland, over whether the country’s legal services market should be opened to competition. The rift became public following the publication last week of recommendations on lifting restrictions in the market [...]