Scottish Enterprise
I was all set to write this column on the shocking dearth of opportunities facing Scotland’s current crop of graduates. According to Go, a business support organisation, 56 graduates will compete for every graduate-level vacancy this year.
The statistic sends shivers up the spine — especially since so many graduates will have got themselves heavily into debt to earn their certificates. It also makes you wonder what economic future Scotland faces. Will there be another brain drain, for example?
Then along came the surprise announcement that Jack Perry has resigned as chief executive of Scottish Enterprise — creating a useful diversion from this bleak news. Immediately his resignation became apparent at about 12.40pm on Friday, the rumour mill got into gear.
Perry, it was said, had been forced out by his dissatisfied paymaster, the finance minister John Swinney. Others said Perry had left because the government was unhappy he had transformed SE into a “buy-to-let landlord on a massive scale” with developments alongside the Clyde, many of which are now largely worthless.
Then I was told some members of the SNP cabinet, including Alex Neil, had a personal antipathy towards Mr Perry.
The next thing I heard was that Scottish Enterprise’s recently installed chairman, Crawford Gillies (what is it about that place and the name Crawford — we’ve now had Crawford Beveridge, Robert Crawford and now Crawford Gillies), had wielded the knife.
It was suggested that Gillies, a former management consultant with Bain & Company, had given himself three months to witness Perry in action before deciding to dispense with his services.
However, a quick call to Ray Perman, a non-executive director of the enterprise body and a former Financial Times journalist, put paid to such talk.
Perman assured me that Perry’s decision to stand down — he has agreed to stay on until a successor is found and is on a 12 month notice period — was entirely his own. “Jack always said that he would remain for more than four years and for no more than six years,” he said.
Perry, whose mid-Atlantic drawl can give a slightly detached air, took over from Robert Crawford in February 2004, so he has now been at Atlantic Quay for five and a bit years. Perman claimed that when Perry told the Scottish Enterprise board he was resigning on Friday morning, it didn’t come as any great surprise “given that he had told us he wanted to leave on a high note.”
Supporters of Perry insist he is leaving the controversial organisation in a better, and less bloated, shape than he found it. The enterprise body’s training and skills functions have been hived off and transferred to Skills Development Scotland while the local enterprise companies have been crunched into a more unitary structure.
This has enabled a leaner and fitter SE to focus on “backing winners”, a select band of some 2,000 Scottish companies that are deemed to have great potential.
Then there is the decision to focus on six “drive” areas, which SE and the Scottish government believe offer the best hope for Scotland’s future: digital markets, energy, financial services, food and drink, life sciences and tourism.
This all sounds impressive but there are still plenty of people who remain sceptical, wondering what SE actually does, other than provide jobs for the MBAs and plough its way through some £320m a year of taxpayers’ money.
Maybe the quango’s board should consider appointing Sir Fred Goodwin as Perry’s successor? It would create a wonderful opportunity for Fred “The Shred” to exert his well-honed cost-cutting skills. If he was prepared to do it on a pro bono basis and with zero perks, it might even enable him to rebuild his tattered reputation.
Was HBOS delusional?
One wonders if Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” is ripping its way through the heart of recession-torn Scotland.
Last week, the luxury homes developer Applecross went bust. It seems that Colin Cumberland and Graham Agett’s company suffered from the same delusional assumptions about the future trajectory of the property market as many others.
Why else would it have taken out a £70m loan to fund its expansion, just as the credit and property bubbles were about to burst in June 2006?
The tragedy is that it was a Scottish bank, driven by similar greed-fuelled fantasies, that had sufficient faith in Applecross’s business model to lend it this fabulous sum at that point. You guessed — it was our very own HBOS.
Let’s have a sniff
It’s reassuring that somebody is not depressed about the state of the Scottish economy.
Last week Jim McColl claimed that he sees not only green shoots but “fully blossoming flowers”.
McColl, who’s Aim-listed vehicle, materials handling group Clyde Process Solutions, has seen its market capitalisation tumble to £14.33m, despite a recent 33% rise in profits, also said the time was right to go back on the acquisition trail.
Whatever Scotland’s richest man is on, I want some!
This Scottish Agenda column was published in The Sunday Times on 31 May 2009