Walter Scott has quit the investment management company he founded in 1983 just two years after selling it for £400m.
Scott, a former nuclear physicist who was famed for wearing a kilt at business meetings, sold Edinburgh-based Walter Scott & Partners to US-based Mellon Financial Corporation in 2006.
He handed over the chairmanship to Kenneth Lyall last year but his departure has only just emerged.
Scott said last week: “I had reached the age of 60 and thought it was time for Ken to have a crack [at being the chairman].” Lyall worked at Arthur Andersen before joining Walter Scott & Partners 25 years ago.
Walter Scott & Partners, has $33 billion (£16.6 billion) under management.
Scott, 61, now divides his time between homes on the Côte d’Azur and in Henley-on-Thames. He said that having run Walter Scott & Partners, which has his family crest as its logo, “almost as a family company” for 25 years, he recognised the approach was not compatible with ownership by a large multinational corporation. However, he said he had no regrets about selling the company to Mellon Financial.
In December 2006, it emerged that Pittsburgh-based Mellon to be acquired by Bank of New York, a $16.5bn deal which completed on 2 July 2007. Sources suggest Scott was unhappy that Mellon failed to notify him of the BNY deal in advance.
Scott received dividend payments of £17.9m as a 70%-owner of the business in the nine months to December 2006, on top of a £3.2m remuneration package (assuming that he was its highest paid director). He is understood to have grossed between £280m and £300m from the sale.
Scott, whose personal wealth was estimated at £180m on the most recent Sunday Times Rich List, said he now intends to focus on philanthropic activities.
A version of this article was published in the Sunday Times on 29 June 2008