SPECULATION was rife about who would be brave – or crazy – enough to take the chair of Scottish Enterprise (SE) following the news last year that its chairman Sir John Ward would retire after his second term.
In the overly-long time it took the Scottish Government to reveal the successor, the name "Crawford" had been doing the rounds and had even been amply reported on in the press.
But most had erroneously assumed the Crawford in line for the job w
as a certain C Beveridge, a well-connected former chief executive of SE and head of Sun Microsystems in Scotland. So when finance minister John Swinney introduced Crawford Gillies as the new chair of SE at a press conference last week, it came as a surprise to many – but not an unhappy one.
According to his CV, this Crawford seems uniquely well suited to the role. And if he is nervous about stepping into the glare of the public and political scrutiny the role entails – during the same week the economy officially entered the deepest, darkest recession in 30 years – he is so far keeping his head about him.
The appointment is one of the few things boding well for SE, among whose chief tasks is to "help businesses grow". Gillies has been helping businesses do just that for 30 years as a business consultant for Bain & Co.
His international experience is also cited as a positive attribute. He has lived in the US – where he did an MBA at Harvard – and London, but the Scots-born former Perth Academy boy returned to Scotland for a little more quality of life and the joys of a "plural existence" filled with non-exec appointments five years ago.
Although his profile has not been as public as the other Crawford's, his contacts book is impressive. One of the many hats in his career portfolio ring is a non-executive directorship with Standard Life.
Gerry Grimstone, the chairman of the board of the Edinburgh-based life and pensions giant, welcomed Gillies' appointment. Grimstone's unhesitatingly positive word for Gillies was in line with several others who know him and have worked with him. There is a sense that the business community is rather pleased to see another of their own, with real business experience, at the helm of the economic development agency particularly in scary times.
Grimstone says: "I think Crawford is a great choice for this role. He's someone who is clear-thinking and practical who understands business very well. It's always good to see jobs like this filled completely on merit by the best person available. We're all facing difficult times at present and the job needs someone of Crawford's calibre."
But it is not all business heads who can make a happy transition from the numbers-oriented world of industry to the venal, back-stabbing world of politics.
It is a funny business being the chairman of Scotland's enterprise agency. The political flak comes from all directions.
Under the last government administration, his predecessor Ward had the SNP's Alex Neil call for his head during the £30 million budget shortfall crisis. Then the Lib Dems' Nichol Stephen, then the enterprise minister, rejected key reforms including the sourcing out of the Business Gateways to local authorities.
Under the SNP, the organisation has undergone serious surgery, with its budget almost halved.
Last week Gillies seemed quite happy about the "refocused" SE – now unburdened with a massive skills agenda or business development, as opposed to economic development.
The other Crawford (Beveridge, that is) for one would like to see less points scoring and more letting the group get on with the job.
"What is unfortunate I think," he said, "is the big contrast I see between Scotland and Ireland in economic development. There is always been a cross-party consensus in Ireland that they will not pick away at economic development because they want the country to succeed. Here there is no such consensus.
"There are a lot of political points scored, which can make it difficult just to keep the organisation on balance when you see all the shooting going on around it. But he's got the skills to do that. I don't think that will be a big deal for him."
Indeed several of Gillies' supporters point out he is no stranger to the political shark tank, having spent five years until 2007 on the management board of the Department of Trade and Industry (now rebranded the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform).
Peter Crossley, head partner at law firm Hammonds, where Gillies has been chairman for three years, describes Gillies as "statesman-like", a skill that Crossley points out came in highly useful when Gillies was chairing the firm's potentially deeply divisive remuneration committee.
Although there is no hint the man is not to everyone's taste, whispers surrounding Gillies' appointment suggest it was thrust upon SE without much consultation.
Candidates were interviewed in November by a selection panel of five members, including chief economic adviser Dr Andrew Goudie, Weir Group and Scottish & Southern Energy chairman Lord Robert Smith and Scottish Leadership Foundation head Zoe van Zwanenberg. Ministers, not SE's chief Jack Perry, made the final decision.
Already Gillies is very careful to acknowledge that, although the SNP's goals for the economy are "ambitious" he "wholly supports the economic directions down from the Cabinet".
Never mind that, as the UK economy is expected to shrink by a gut-sinking 3 per cent this year, the SNP's ambitions to raise Scotland's growth rate to the UK level by 2011 are starting to look nonsensical.
As for the other Crawford, the one who seems pleased not to be facing the challenges Gillies does, he says he "feels (Gillies'] pain".
"The difficulty he is going to have is the SE budget is now fairly small, about £280m. Against the huge size of the difficulties facing the economy that is a tiny amount of money, especially given the billions governments are spending to bail out banks and things.
"The real key is to focus and say if that is all we have got to spend, how can we spend it in some way that makes it the most useful spend for the small amount of money we have got."
BACKGROUNDCRAWFORD Gillies, 52, is a former pupil of Perth Academy and an Edinburgh University law graduate and a Harvard MBA.
He joined international business consultants Bain & Co and became its head in the UK from 1996 to 2001 and head of the firm's European business until 2005.
He is a member of Scottish Enterprise's International Advisory Board for Scotland, where he launched the Saltire Foundation, a charity sending 14 young Scots to study at Babson College, Boston followed by an internship at a major US firm.
Gillies is a director of Standard Life, the law firm Hammonds and Touch Bionics, the Livingston-based artificial limb developer. He is chairman of the advisory board to Glasgow IT firm, Sumerian Networks, and chairman of risk advisors, Control Risks Group.
He sat on the management board of the Department of Trade & Industry between 2002 and 2007.
In 2000 he relocated his family from London to Edinburgh: "For the same reason as a lot of people are attracted back: quality of life, the education system. All attracted me back and I have no regrets having done that."
