DEALMAKERS BREAKFAST
FINANCING OUR FUTURE INFRASTRUCTURE
THURSDAY 10TH APRIL 2025
THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH
08:15 – 11.30
EVENT PARTNER: THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL INVESTMENT BANK
ABOUT THE EVENT
Capital spending on Scotland’s infrastructure is expected to be over £7bn this year with the ambition of a ‘green reindustrialisation of Scotland’. But is this enough? And what will the nation get for such sums?
Meanwhile, there will be a tripling of investment in offshore wind in 2025, expected to leverage a further £1.5bn of private investment in the infrastructure and manufacturing facilities.
The Scottish National Investment Bank, our Event Partner, has a minimum of £2bn to invest in projects in Scotland over the next decade.
The private sector is being pressed into action on housing, investing £768m in affordable homes. However, Scotland needs a mix of social rent, mid-market rent, and private home ownership to be built. But who will be funding this, and how?
£1.1 billion has been earmarked to maintain and renew our rail infrastructure, while £237 million will be invested in maintaining and improving our ports and delivering a ferry fleet for the islands.
Scotland’s trunk road network will receive £1bn to improve the sad state of our roads. While Scotland’s hospitality industry needs world-class resorts to maintain its global reputation.
So, where are the opportunities for Scottish businesses? How can we ensure that international capital is deployed correctly? And what lessons do we still have to learn about putting in place resilient, net zero infrastructure to meet the climate challenges that Scotland is facing?
Our panel of experts will untangle this range of vital topics and give conference attendees insights into the potential outcomes.
Finlayson puts spotlight on £100m innovation fund
Panellists candid on the national challenges and imperatives of ensuring economic growth for Scotland
The DealMakers’ Breakfast at the RSE in April provoked sparkling debate and earnest discussion with the expert panel.
Peter Reekie, Chief Executive of the Scottish Futures Trust, Jane Wood, Chief Executive of Homes for Scotland, and Jimmy Williamson, Net Zero Director of the Scottish National Investment Bank, all took time to speak candidly about our national challenges as well as successes such as the school rebuilding programme..
While Scottish financier and global markets expert Angus Macpherson – speaking in a personal capacity – delivered an eloquent introduction and explanation which calmed nerves despite the turmoil caused by President Donald Trump in the capital markets. The Business editor, Kenny Kemp, ably steered the morning session, which focused on the funding of our future infrastructure.
As ever it was the questions from the floor that elicited the most interesting responses. Sandy Finlayson, the founder of MBM Commercial and a veteran dealmaker in Scotland who helped raise funding for the likes of Optos, spoke with authority.
“The Scottish Government launched the NSET – the National Strategy for Economic Transformation – to considerable acclaim with an all-day conference in the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh a couple of years ago.
“It was all about inclusive, green growth, creating new companies, building more exciting businesses, investment and creating lots of new good quality jobs. We’ve not heard very much about it since,” he stated.
Finlayson said a leadership board was due to be chaired by the First Minister yet it was never convened during the tenure of Humza Yousaf, before John Swinney returned as First Minister. A development board was be convened by the economy minister which, he understood, had never met.
“This was followed a year later by the Scottish National Innovation Strategy, with the creation of a £100m innovation fund to finance forward-looking companies coming out of our higher education institutions.
“We’ve identified about £3.5bn of innovation funds in England and Wales but we have so far failed to get a simple £100m fund together in Scotland.”
He asked the panel why Scotland has not been able to get the fund up and running to help those coming out of university with good commercial ideas.
Macpherson, who chaired the Investor Panel, a sub-group of the NSET, which straddled the tenure of three Scottish leaders, said: “I was very heartened when we saw the First Minister that we were very much encouraged to speak truth to power – and exactly the same observations that you raise Sandy were made. We were told they did not want to see another exhaustive, analysis of the problem with the suggestion that there should be a further committee to explore solutions.”
He said the ministers wanted an ‘actionable plan’, and all of the panel’s recommendations, which concluded that Scotland was not an investor friendly destination, made in May 2024, have been accepted, and are in the process of being worked upon. The Scottish Government said it would publish a progress report by June 2024.
At the time of going to press, this was still being awaited.
Cross-directorate working in this government is poor
Jane Wood, who six months ago joined the NSET board, said its aim was to ensure the successful delivery of the economic priorities laid out in the Programme for Government.
“It was a bit like government marking its own exam questions, if you like. It has oversight over all the projects of Scottish Enterprise, local regional strategies and a plethora of other strategies. I wanted to go on the board because this is a really difficult political environment in Scotland to do business. And post Scottish election, it’s going to be the same and it will be difficult to get deals done,” she said.
While she agreed its intention was to ‘hold government to account’, it is absolutely dependent on efficient cross-directorates working within the Scottish Government. “Cross-directorate working in this government is poor,” she stated.
Peter Reekie said Scotland does not have a problem finding finance but one of making projects “financeable” – a matter of the structure and repayment of project finance.
“A lot of my work is around trying to change the things we are focusing on to attracting investment and creating the conditions for investability,” he said.
Macpherson made his opening remarks amid a frenzy of proposed tariffs by Trump, particularly against China and the EU, which threaten to unravel the long-standing order of global trade. “He [Trump] has still raised tariffs on every country in the world irrespective of whether he had a free trade agreement and he has outright declared war on China in terms of trade.
“That is obviously a very significant move, particularly in the benefits of globalisation when China represents roughly 33 per cent of world manufacturing,” said Macpherson.
Wood reminded the audience that housing in all its tenures is fundamental to how we function as a society. “We know we are in a housing emergency in Scotland. We know we have no real exit strategy for that.
“We know we have a 100,000 shortfall. And we know there is a significant lack of knowledge and understanding about why we build homes, why we need them, who builds them and how we finance them. “I say this across all of the informers in civic society: this is a real concern.
Reekie raises concerns over costs
Peter Reekie, of the Scottish Futures Trust, explained that the long-term costs of major infrastructure are increasing. “The long-term costs have changed significantly. If we look post-Covid, at 2021, since then there has been a 26 per cent cost inflation on the basic cost of building the asset.”
The cost of ten-year bond borrowing in 2021 was 0.3 per cent, now it is 4.8 per cent.
So adding the cost inflation of the asset, plus the increasing cost of finance, then repaying over 25 years, the cost of that asset is double what it cost four or five years ago.
“The combination of these two effects is one part of leading us to see that deals are much more difficult to do … in our micro world, that shift over a four-year period is making a hell of difference in what we want to do,” he said.
“The big chunky pieces are paid for by consumers. The social and transport infrastructure is paid for by taxpayers. That split changes through time and jurisdictions, with the difference in how they are financed.
“Public sector infrastructure is usually financed by public sector and debt, although there is private financing in public infrastructure, and now we are seeing elements of public finance into private funded projects, such as the investment banks.”
Agenda
10 April 2025 | Agenda - Building to Last
Registration, Breakfast / Networking
Call to Panel Session
Panel: Introduction & Discussion
Intro by Event Chair & Discussion: A Spotlight on Infrastructure and the Pipeline of Deals
Editor of The Business, Event Chair
Kenny Kemp
Editor of The Business, Event Chair
Kenny Kemp is an author, editor, journalist, and Editor of The BUSINESS, distributed with the Sunday Times Scotland.
Kenny was the founding Business Editor of The Sunday Herald and Editor of BQ (Business Quarter) Scotland for five years from 2010 until 2015. He was a contributor and later Editor of Scottish Business Insider.
He was also the founding Editor of Panmure House Perspectives [Panmure House is the Edinburgh home of economist Adam Smith and is part of Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University].
He has been an Associate of the University of Edinburgh Business School since 2015.
Net Zero Director, Scottish National Investment Bank
Jimmy Williamson
Net Zero Director, Scottish National Investment Bank
Jimmy has over 20 years of experience in originating and structuring complex growth financing solutions across multiple sectors, including technology venture capital investment with NatWest and leveraged finance for private equity with Lloyds Banking Group, where he led their regional teams across the UK, including their sector coverage for the oil & gas vertical.
At Lloyds, he also managed its cornerstone investment into Bridges Ventures’ first fund, one of the UK’s first commercially successful impact investment funds.
More recently, he was the commercial director of Calash, a specialist energy and industrials strategic consultancy, helping clients and investors transition business models and monetise sustainable organic and acquisition-led growth in new and existing markets.
FRSE, Chief Executive, Scottish Futures Trust
Peter Reekie
FRSE, Chief Executive, Scottish Futures Trust
Peter has worked across the private and public sectors as a civil engineer, an infrastructure financier, and an advisor with one of the world’s leading professional services firms.
He joined SFT in 2008, when the Scottish Government established it as a centre of infrastructure expertise and became its chief executive in 2018.
Peter leads SFT’s work, which encompasses long-term strategy development across infrastructure sectors, structuring and managing multi-billion-pound investment programmes, and making the best use of existing assets in the transition to a net zero economy.
Peter is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Chief Executive Officer, Homes for Scotland
Jane Wood
Chief Executive Officer, Homes for Scotland
Jane is a well-known and highly regarded business leader in Scotland. She joined as Homes for Scotland’s Chief Executive in June 2022, responsible for driving the organisation forward to achieve its primary goal of delivering more homes for the people of Scotland.
Before this, Jane was BT Group UK Nations and Regions Director and a member of the BT Scotland Board, managing relationships with public bodies, politicians and other key stakeholders on strategic business areas, including climate change, skills, SMEs, infrastructure and public policy affairs.
She was previously also CEO in Scotland and then UK Executive Director for the membership organisation Business in the Community, and Head of Corporate Affairs for Scotland and Northern Ireland for the Walgreens Boots Alliance.
Chair, Noble & Co
Angus Macpherson
Chair, Noble & Co
Coffee Break / Intermission
Panel: Second Session
What kind of legacy do we want for Scotland?
Editor of The Business, Event Chair
Kenny Kemp
Editor of The Business, Event Chair
Kenny Kemp is an author, editor, journalist, and Editor of The BUSINESS, distributed with the Sunday Times Scotland.
Kenny was the founding Business Editor of The Sunday Herald and Editor of BQ (Business Quarter) Scotland for five years from 2010 until 2015. He was a contributor and later Editor of Scottish Business Insider.
He was also the founding Editor of Panmure House Perspectives [Panmure House is the Edinburgh home of economist Adam Smith and is part of Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University].
He has been an Associate of the University of Edinburgh Business School since 2015.
Net Zero Director, Scottish National Investment Bank
Jimmy Williamson
Net Zero Director, Scottish National Investment Bank
Jimmy has over 20 years of experience in originating and structuring complex growth financing solutions across multiple sectors, including technology venture capital investment with NatWest and leveraged finance for private equity with Lloyds Banking Group, where he led their regional teams across the UK, including their sector coverage for the oil & gas vertical.
At Lloyds, he also managed its cornerstone investment into Bridges Ventures’ first fund, one of the UK’s first commercially successful impact investment funds.
More recently, he was the commercial director of Calash, a specialist energy and industrials strategic consultancy, helping clients and investors transition business models and monetise sustainable organic and acquisition-led growth in new and existing markets.
FRSE, Chief Executive, Scottish Futures Trust
Peter Reekie
FRSE, Chief Executive, Scottish Futures Trust
Peter has worked across the private and public sectors as a civil engineer, an infrastructure financier, and an advisor with one of the world’s leading professional services firms.
He joined SFT in 2008, when the Scottish Government established it as a centre of infrastructure expertise and became its chief executive in 2018.
Peter leads SFT’s work, which encompasses long-term strategy development across infrastructure sectors, structuring and managing multi-billion-pound investment programmes, and making the best use of existing assets in the transition to a net zero economy.
Peter is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Chief Executive Officer, Homes for Scotland
Jane Wood
Chief Executive Officer, Homes for Scotland
Jane is a well-known and highly regarded business leader in Scotland. She joined as Homes for Scotland’s Chief Executive in June 2022, responsible for driving the organisation forward to achieve its primary goal of delivering more homes for the people of Scotland.
Before this, Jane was BT Group UK Nations and Regions Director and a member of the BT Scotland Board, managing relationships with public bodies, politicians and other key stakeholders on strategic business areas, including climate change, skills, SMEs, infrastructure and public policy affairs.
She was previously also CEO in Scotland and then UK Executive Director for the membership organisation Business in the Community, and Head of Corporate Affairs for Scotland and Northern Ireland for the Walgreens Boots Alliance.
Chair, Noble & Co
Angus Macpherson
Chair, Noble & Co
Finish
Speakers
Jane Wood
Chief Executive Officer, Homes for Scotland
Jane is a well-known and highly regarded business leader in Scotland. She joined as Homes for Scotland’s Chief Executive in June 2022, responsible for driving the organisation forward to achieve its primary goal of delivering more homes for the people of Scotland.
Before this, Jane was BT Group UK Nations and Regions Director and a member of the BT Scotland Board, managing relationships with public bodies, politicians and other key stakeholders on strategic business areas, including climate change, skills, SMEs, infrastructure and public policy affairs.
She was previously also CEO in Scotland and then UK Executive Director for the membership organisation Business in the Community, and Head of Corporate Affairs for Scotland and Northern Ireland for the Walgreens Boots Alliance.
Jimmy Williamson
Net Zero Director, Scottish National Investment Bank
Jimmy has over 20 years of experience in originating and structuring complex growth financing solutions across multiple sectors, including technology venture capital investment with NatWest and leveraged finance for private equity with Lloyds Banking Group, where he led their regional teams across the UK, including their sector coverage for the oil & gas vertical.
At Lloyds, he also managed its cornerstone investment into Bridges Ventures’ first fund, one of the UK’s first commercially successful impact investment funds.
More recently, he was the commercial director of Calash, a specialist energy and industrials strategic consultancy, helping clients and investors transition business models and monetise sustainable organic and acquisition-led growth in new and existing markets.
Peter Reekie
FRSE, Chief Executive, Scottish Futures Trust
Peter has worked across the private and public sectors as a civil engineer, an infrastructure financier, and an advisor with one of the world’s leading professional services firms.
He joined SFT in 2008, when the Scottish Government established it as a centre of infrastructure expertise and became its chief executive in 2018.
Peter leads SFT’s work, which encompasses long-term strategy development across infrastructure sectors, structuring and managing multi-billion-pound investment programmes, and making the best use of existing assets in the transition to a net zero economy.
Peter is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Angus Macpherson
Chair, Noble & Co
Angus Macpherson is chair of Noble & Co, one of Scotland’s leading financial advisory firms, and chair of the Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust PLC and a non-executive director of the Schroder Japan Trust PLC. He co-chaired the Scottish Investor Panel with the First Minister and is a member of the Scottish Government’s Financial Services Growth & Development Advisory Board. Before joining Noble in 2006, Angus began his career with Lazard Brothers and held senior roles at Merrill Lynch in Hong He Kong and Singapore, latterly as Head of Capital Markets and Financing for the Asian region. He joined the board of Edinburgh-based private bank Hampden Bank in October 2021.
SCOTTISH NATIONAL INVESTMENT BANK
The Scottish National Investment Bank was launched in November 2020 as a development investment bank for Scotland. It delivers patient, mission-impact investments to the Scottish economy.
The Bank provides patient (long-term) capital to businesses and. projects throughout Scotland. Supporting the development of a fairer, more sustainable economy, environmentally, socially and financially.
The Bank’s ambition is to invest its allocated public capital and encourage additional private capital to invest alongside it to support the delivery of our missions.
The Bank’s missions have been designed to address the long term, persistent challenges facing Scotland. The missions have been set by the Scottish Government, funded by Scottish Ministers.