Jamie Grant, head of corporate banking at Barclays, says the key issue for Scotland’s economy is not who owns the country’s companies but the ability to attract more funding to help them grow
Jamie Grant has spent 21 years watching Scottish businesses change hands, and his conclusion after two decades is that the primary focus should be on the quality of investment and whether it supports growth in Scotland.
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Jamie joined Barclays from Bank of Scotland in the early 2000s to build the lender’s leveraged finance and private equity mid-market buy-out capability north of the Border.
Two decades on, he runs a corporate finance book stretching from family SMEs turning over £6.5 million to PLCs, spanning real estate, public sector and mid-to large corporate clients, alongside an unofficial role as figurehead for Barclays’ wider Scottish presence.
It’s a vantage point that puts Jamie squarely in the middle of a debate that Scotsman Insider’s Scotland 500 private equity (PE) analysis reignited earlier this year, which found roughly one in eight of the country’s top 500 companies are now PE-backed, split between American, UK and rest-of-world capital, with industrials and infrastructure the dominant sectors.
However, Jamie rejects the idea that this represents a hollowing-out of Corporate Scotland: “I don’t see businesses exiting Scotland, I just see them being enhanced by capital flows coming into Scotland to support them to grow further.
“I don’t see businesses getting bought by overseas firms and then shut down. That’s certainly not a trend I’m seeing –I’m seeing the opposite.”
And his team’s recent activity backs that up. This includes a healthcare acquisition, a refinancing and acquisition funding package for a hotel group, and continued lending against port and airport infrastructure now largely under PE ownership, much of it Canadian and international capital.
Jamie sees Scotland’s PE landscape shifting away from the domestically headquartered firms of a decade ago –the Dunedins of the world – towards a market still anchored by names such as Maven and Scottish Equity Partners, but increasingly reliant on capital based in London rather than Edinburgh or Glasgow.
“There’s still a lot of capital there, it’s probably just sitting in London and we need to attract it up to Scotland,” he explains. “Because for me it’s not about ownership type, it’s about the actual capital that comes into the businesses and the funds to grow them.”
He reports that recent transaction activity has been “a bit subdued” against a challenging geopolitical and economic backdrop, although he points to research conducted by Barclays’ Business Prosperity Index showing Scottish firms are more confident than the UK average, a figure he puts around 85 per cent.
Businesses are taking longer over decisions than in the past, he says, but not out of caution born of weakness, rather discipline learned from the2007-08 downturn, with less appetite for over-leveraging and more focus on getting funding structures right.
Mid-corporate activity involving family and SME-owned businesses remains the busiest part of his book simply by virtue of making up the bulk of the Scottish economy.
Jamie reports that large corporate deal flow has cooled slightly this year, but flags energy and infrastructure as a current bright spot.
International buyers, he believes, are drawn to Scotland by the same fundamentals, regardless of sector –a stable legal system, management teams with genuine ambition to grow, and pricing that looks comparatively attractive given current interest rates and exchange rates.
“I don’t think it’s one particular thing,” he adds. “It’s the stable environment and easy-to-understand legal environment, and it’s seen as good value.”
Scotland’s north-east and Highland regions are set to receive a scale of capital deployment that became clear at The Scotsman’s Highlands and Islands Green Energy Conference in Inverness.
Billions of pounds have been committed over the next three to four years as grid and substation infrastructure projects accelerate.
Jamie says Barclays is actively looking to build capacity in Aberdeen to serve this activity, with housebuilders on his client list already busy constructing homes for incoming workers.
Potential Indian summer for Scotch whisky industry
Jamie Grant points to the UK-India Free Trade Agreement, which came into effect last month, as a potential turning point for the Scotch whisky industry after a difficult few years.
He says: “Obviously, with the changes in the tariffs in India that’s hopefully coming, businesses in the whisky sector are thinking about how do we take advantage of those opportunities, how do we set ourselves up for distribution?”
Having helped organise the event, as a non-exec director, Jamie observes that the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow could provide a channel into the Indian market, with the next Games scheduled to be held in the territory.
“I’m actually involved in the Commonwealth Games, and then the next Games after Glasgow is into India,” he says.
“Hopefully when the India delegates are over, I think there’ll be quite a lot of discussions going on during that week around how can we really take advantage of those channels that are opening up.”
Jamie links the opportunity to wider momentum in hospitality and tourism, pointing to Scotland’s favourable exchange rate, the Edinburgh Festival, the North Coast 500, and the Games themselves as powerful factors attracting more visitors, and – in turn – commercial interest in Scottish producers and their routes to market.