Veteran Scottish business figure Martin Gilbert recounted the astonishing global success of Revolut, set up ten years ago and now re-defining global financial transactions with nearly 70 million users, at a conference in Edinburgh.

The position of Revolut has been strengthened by a major investment by Nvidia, the world-leading AI chipmaker, which has now secured a £57bn valuation in a secondary share sale. The sale cements Revolut’s status as one of Europe’s most valuable banks with a market capitalisation higher than Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest.

The chip giant’s venture capital arm, NVentures has supported the fintech alongside Andreesen Horowitz, Franklin Templeton and T. Rowe Price Associates.

Gilbert, one of Britain’s most prominent investment sector leaders, was speaking at the WeDO Scotland annual conference for Scottish entrepreneurs and business founders, in what was an inspirational day at the Hoxton hotel in Edinburgh. The former founder of Aberdeen Asset Management, one of the longest serving CEO in UK history, stepped down from Aberdeen after its merger with Standard Life in 2017.

“I was lucky and the longest servicing FTSE CEO, and the only way to do that was by appointing yourself! I did 23 years as the CEO, then we merged with Standard Life, and I thought it was not for me, and I left.”

Gilbert was in conversation with Richard Simpson, of Limitless and chair of WeDO Scotland. He explained it is easy to be a CEO in the good times, but the true test is when the world is falling apart. Looking back, he says the worst time was the “long and drawn-out” bear market between 2000 and 2004, when Aberdeen was heavily involved with leveraged closed-end funds.

“Our share price went down about 90 per cent. Most CEOs don’t survive a 75 per cent fall, never mind 90 per cent. You’re lucky if you survive a 30 per cent drop today.”

He carried on, desperate situation, backed by non-executive director Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister. “He was the best non-executive we had, and we sorted it out. It was such a painful experience being a CEO in the eye of a press storm,” he explained.

Despite these harder times, Aberdeen Asset Management never lost a client and ended up managing money from Europe, America and Canada into Asia, which was the fastest growing market of that time. After a deal with the UK financial regulator, Aberdeen bought Morgan Grenfell Asset Management, which tripled the size of the company, giving it global scale.

CHAIRMAN OF REVOLUT

Since stepped back from Aberdeen, he has been an early investor, and now chairman of Revolut, working closely with Nikolay Stornoskiy, the co-founder and CEO of the fintech company. When asked by Simpson for the reason for Revolut’s success., he said:

“It is about the product. It is exceptional. It is the one global product that is out there that you use on own app in multiple jurisdictions. Nikolay, who started as a foreign currency trade with Credit Suisse, came up with this idea. People were getting ripped off at the airport or by the bank on foreign exchange.”

Consumers were paying 4 per cent on currency charges, when Storonskiy came up with the fairer concept of charging ‘spot’, which is 0.01 per cent. “That was the idea and that was how we grew the business.”

Revolut, which Gilbert explained was making millions a month in profits, is still growing the functions on its app. This gives massive firepower for the brand to expand which will include major F1 sponsorship next season. “We’re up to close to 70 million users globally, 12 million in the UK, and we add a million users every 17 days. It’s a phenomenon. Half the growth is from referral, and the other is new.”

He cites Ireland where customer numbers are massive and ‘to revolut’ had become a verb about splitting the bill for dinner.

The conference also heard from Danny Campbell, the charismatic architect, designer and television presenter, who runs HOKO Design, who spoke candidly about his recent personal challenges and how he has overcome them; Gilly Bain, the CEO of YourGB, a leading events management company which has delivered exceptional experiences for a range of leading brands; Leigh Mellis, the chief executive officer of Jetlogic, a private jet services business, and the WeDo entrepreneur of the year; Forbes Connor, of Change Waste Recycling, and his battle over the deposit return scheme; and Gary Crawford, of Owendale Advisory, who opened the conference with an excellent update on the growth of AI. The event, curated by Belinda Roberts, featured two panel sessions on investments, and another on business and economy.

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