The Record’s front page bellowed the result of yet another poll. Only this poll tried to ascertain whether the Scottish public actually wanted a poll on Section 28! A sort of poll about a poll: “We want vote on clause… 64 per cent of Scots tell Dewar they back referendum… and 60 per cent said they would vote to keep the law which bans the promotion of homosexuality in schools”. This was heralded as “the biggest poll ever conducted on the issue”. But readers were beginning to tire of the onslaught and no other paper followed up the story. Brian Souter reappeared to welcome the Record’s findings. Scottish Opinion Ltd who - according to The Record - “Interviewed 1426 adults across Scotland by phone from March 31 to April 4” once again conducted the survey. Jack Irvine said: “The Record has demonstrated it has totally understood the will of the people” while editor of ScotsGay magazine, John Hein was quoted saying: “I’m sure the vote reflects the opinion of people after the lengthy and expensive campaign waged by Mr Souter”. The poll was similar to one already carried out by The Big Issue in Scotland which showed a polarisation of views along age lines. In their poll of 1,304, conducted by the same company, over half of 18 to 24-year-olds backed repeal while older voters became increasingly conservative and favoured its retention. The Big Issue poll also commissioned Progressive Partnership to poll head teachers and MSPs which went on to reveal widespread support for its abolition. The Record announced the results “a blow to campaigners who want Section 28 axed”. The tabloid’s editorial insisted the “people’s voice will be heard…” and stormed: “What will it take to get the stubborn Scottish government to unplug their ears and listen to the voice of the people…? From the moment they announced the repeal of Section 28, it has been obvious that they are flouting the will of the majority by siding with the gay lobby. Today, they have more evidence that they are driving a dangerous division deep into Scottish society. They have another think coming because this issue will not go away quietly… The sound of protest is growing too loud to be ignored”. Meanwhile, turning the music up in Deacon Brodie’s bar on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, The Record’s political editor got up with two other Record reporters at a karaoke to belt out the Village People’s gay anthem, YMCA.
In an award ceremony organised by media and marketing magazine The Drum, The Daily Record was made Scottish newspaper of the year for best news coverage. The Record beat its chest in celebration: “Scotland’s champion leads the way in fighting to ensure the nation’s real voice is heard… Our support for the campaign against a repeal of Section 28 has been a reflection of the very real fears across the country”, adding; “the Record continues to be a caring, family newspaper”. The chairman of the judging panel was former Herald editor Arnold Kemp, who wrote for The Observer in Scotland. Other judges were the USA’s Boston Globe editor Matthew Storin; Endell Laird, former editor of The Daily Record; Cameron Grant, former chairman of the Institute of Public Relations; Giles Brooksbank, of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising; and David Appleton, head of group media relations at the Royal Bank of Scotland. At the media awards, the former editor of The Record, Endell Laird said: “The Daily Record takes news stories and gives them a good punchy angle”. In London, the Scotland on Sunday won an award for best Sunday newspaper in the 2000 Newspaper Awards. Its editor John McGurk sat on the judging panel.
The managing director of merchant bank, Noble Grossart was Sir Angus Grossart and its co-founder was Sir Iain Noble. Sir Angus Grossart was chairman of The Scottish Daily Record. He hinted at his position on the repeal of Section 28 when he was reported saying to The Sunday Herald: “I have a lot of respect for Brian and… he has the right to do this”. Noble Grossart’s portfolio included Brian Souter’s Stagecoach as well as the Church of Scotland. Indeed, the non-executive director of Noble Grossart Ltd and Lloyds TSB Group plc, Ewan Brown, had been a non-executive director of Stagecoach since 1988.
Sir Angus Grossart was Scotland’s leading investment banker and a dealmaker whose influence reached into many boardrooms. He controlled large amounts of arts funding as chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund in Scotland, served on the boards of brewer Scottish & Newcastle, the Royal Bank of Scotland and even became a director of David Murray’s Murray International Holdings, which listed Noble Grossart as its merchant banker. (Jack Irvine had been both managing director and editor-in-chief of Murray’s failed newspaper, The Sunday Scot). Sir Angus Grossart was also chairman of the £1.1 billion Scottish Investment Trust (SIT). (Standard Life Investments were big institutional shareholders in both SIT and Stagecoach). Sir Angus went on to face angry shareholders when it was revealed the SIT, of which he was chairman, paid his merchant bank, Noble Grossart more than £300,000 in corporate advice fees in 2001. But that was nothing compared to the fury unleashed over the payment of £2.5m of bonuses to four of his fellow directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland! Grossart sat on the committee approving the bonuses. There was a huge protest vote of 235 million shares (some £4bn of the bank’s stock market worth) against him. His seat on the SIT board, held for almost a quarter of a century - almost three times as long as the nine-year maximum term considered appropriate - angered shareholders. It wasn’t the only time a company was advised by Noble Grossart while its chairman; Sir Angus Grossart sat on the board of that company. Edinburgh Fund Managers, where Sir Angus formerly held a position as deputy chairman, paid £229,000 in fees to Noble Grossart. As advisors to plant hire group, Hewden Stuart, Deutsche Bank was dropped in favour of Noble Grossart, which went on to help sell the company to Finning International of Canada. Grossart was a director of Hewden Stuart. By 2004 Grossart joined Rangers owner and metals entrepreneur David Murray, Brian Souter and his sister, Ann Gloag rescuing the former bus-builder operation, TransBus, later Alexander Dennis, in Falkirk. Nobel Grossart took a 30% share, and by 2008, Companies House was showing them unveiling an 81% leap in pre-tax profits to £14.7m. The Herald reported Chairman Sir Angus receiving an annual salary of £514,000 in 2008. Such a beneficial holding in Noble Grossart earned him dividends of £1.14m. In their accounts, they attributed their success to having only a small number of executives “engaging with clients whom we know and whose business we understand…”
It was a Scottish consortium backed by Peter Cummings, the head of corporate banking at the Bank of Scotland that bought Falkirk-based body and chassis business, Transbus for £90m in 2004. The Bank of Scotland chipped in with around £70m of debt and equity finance. The deal was led by merchant bank Noble Grossart, put together whilst Grossart was on the Iraq-Syrian border looking at castles left by Christian Crusaders. Pleased with beating off a shortlist of bidders at the eleventh hour, Grossart told The Sunday Herald that he had worked with Murray and Souter “almost telepathically”. He added: “The bottom line is that we had been aware of it (TransBus International) for some time. We had been tracking it, and when we moved, we moved very decisively”. Grossart and David Murray, (Rangers football club chairman, Murray enjoyed a close working relationship with Peter Cummings to help his significant metals, mining and property interests reach a personal fortune estimated at £650m in 2006), would own about half of Transbus - renamed Alexander Dennis to reflect its bus-making routes - while Brian Souter and Ann Gloag would be minority shareholders with over 40 per cent. Murray’s firm, Wishaw-based Multi Metals had been supplying steel to Transbus while Souter’s Stagecoach had also been customers of the firm. The result was a company with annual sales at the time of £200m and a strong forward order book bought for £40m with the addition of their commitment to invest £50m of working capital into it.
Eton-educated Sir Iain Noble, who, with Sir Angus Grossart, founded Noble Grossart, invited controversy in 2003 when he was invited to talk to the pro-blood sport Scottish Countryside Alliance, another outfit whose PR was handled by Jack Irvine’s Media House. Noble owned an estate and hotel on the Isle of Skye and was chairman of the Skye Bridge Community, while Sir Angus Grossart was a financial advisor to the builders of the controversial bridge, the Miller Group. Noble told the assembled audience how proud he was not to have English blood in his veins, something he felt the Scottish National Heritage would appreciate in its efforts to maintain “the purity of species”. Discussing sex workers, he was reported saying: “Damn it, prostitution is the easiest thing for a woman to do who wants to earn a bob. But it doesn’t mean it’s the best”. He also hit out at “English people…, buying up all the houses” before adding: “Damn it, it would be quite wrong if this continued. Who can stop it and how can we do it? Does that mean I must be a racialist? I think I have to confess that I am. It doesn’t mean I don’t like foreigners. I love them, all colours. I have many friends and even one or two black ones. But I don’t want them to settle and create ghettos in my patch of the country. And I believe that SNH should approve of this instinct, because genetics are the key to everything”. Sir Iain Noble and Sir Angus Grossart were both members of the rather Masonic-style, all-male gentleman’s club in Edinburgh, The Speculative Society. Membership included large swathes of the Scotland’s legal establishment as well as senior businessman, civil servants and bankers, including Lord MacKay of Clashfern, the retired former Lord Chancellor of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet and another sponsor of Brian Souter’s ‘private referendum’ on the repeal of Clause 28.
Standard Life, Europe’s largest mutual life insurer was a big investor in Souter’s Stagecoach along with Donald Macdonald’s Hotel chain and Grossart’s Scottish Investment Trust. Standard Life had to face disgruntled policyholders in 2003 when, as bonuses, endowments and final payouts from their pensions tumbled; executive directors reaped almost £2m in performance-related bonuses along with pension entitlements worth another £5m. Chief Executive Stuart Bell received a long-term incentive plan award of £110,000 in 2002 upon his retirement and his £373,000-a-year pension was increased to £420,000 during the year. Despite tumbling stock markets and a number of cuts in payouts for its 2.6 million policyholders, in 2004, Standard Life announced 1,000 of its employees would loose their jobs while 35 of its top paid sales staff were taken on an all-expenses paid trip to Barbados. John Hylands, the finance director’s remuneration packaged doubled and Claude Garcia, president of Standard Life’s Canadian operation got a 24 per cent increase in total remuneration to £341,000, including a basic salary of £221,000 and bonus of £108,000. Standard Life’s ousted Chief Executive, Iain Lumsden received £1.13m in salary and performance related bonuses. His internally appointed successor, Sandy Crombie got an £83,000 rise in total remuneration to £603,000 in his former post as deputy chief executive. When Crombie was promoted, his basic salary was increased from £480,000 to £600,000 and he benefited from a £5.5m pension fund. After the new Standard Life boss took delivery of his £65,000 red Carrera 2 Porsche, decorator, George Ormiston revealed how, in 1990 he was forced to take Crombie to a small claims court over a £461 bill after Crombie’s wife, Margaret, didn’t like the colour wallpaper her husband had chosen resulting in him disputing the bill.
By the time of its AGM in 2003, Standard Life board members were being accused of being complacent, arrogant and clubby and by 2004, The Herald’s editorial was positively scathing: “Standard Life is earning a reputation as a complacent, haughty, and insular business run by a discredited executive management, one that has doubly let the members down by using some of their money to secure a financial reward when none has been merited”. Eventually, in 2005, Sandy Crombie took a “principled decision” and agreed to forgo bonus payments of £500,000 whilst the rest of the directors hung on to theirs. (He later received a £2.75m increase in the value of his pension fund taking it to £6.7m).
Standard Life continued to upset members when chairman, Sir Brian Stewart decided to ‘divert’ unused votes at the board elections to support established candidates. Ronnie Sloan, a semi-retired actuary who had twice stood for election had challenged Standard Life over the issue. He believed if you voted for fewer than six candidates and wanted to give a thumbs-down to the ones not receiving your vote, you should have to tick a box preventing the chairman from doing what he wanted with the wasted votes. He complained that it should be the other way round and the box should be ticked if you wanted the chairman to cast your unused votes.
In 2010, Standard life was fined almost £2.5m after the Financial Services Authority found the company, under Sir Sandy Crombie, had been misleading some 100,000 of investors of its Pension Sterling Fund; telling its customers their money was a low-risk investment in cash when, in reality, most of their money was being ploughed into toxic mortgages.
Next: Part 34 – the SSBA faces financial ruin and Apollo the comic-book hero.
garry@garryotton.com
