Sky is the limit for Quayle Munro under new boss

They also remind Mr Cormie of his own unlikely past, as a student at Edinburgh College of Art just across the road, before he took the road to London to become a financier, returning in 2008 to join the quirky Quayle Munro as head of corporate finance.

He says: “Since Ian Jones’ retirement the business has changed dramatically, culturally, in the way we do business.

“It was absolutely deliberate coming here, it would have been so easy to go into another (Georgian) townhouse rather than open-plan... and the way we are rewarding people is different, there is greater volatility, more like a bank.”

Founded in 1983 as an investment fund bolted onto an advisory business specialising in privatisation finance, and listed 10 years later, QM shifted its emphasis to London and to the wider advisory market in 2007.

It joined forces with former Barings director Peter Norris in a £7.5 million acquisition of his boutique New Boathouse Capital and then acquired the Van Tulleken advisory boutique with offices in London and New York, though the latter office was closed last year.

QM boasts a specialist edge in media, retail, and increasingly finance as well as energy -- Mr Cormie’s old stamping-ground at KPMG. It has now sold most of Mr Jones’ old investment portfolio, leaving only its outsize holding in private housebuilder Morris.

“We are not a big trading business,” he says. “What we need is high-quality people who generate business. They just need to be pointed in the right direction and let them get on with it. Ian’s style was certainly more autocratic -- that has probably changed.”

The group’s deals last year included the sale of New Energy Finance to Bloomberg and Point Carbon to Thomson Reuters, the acquisition of Church House Trust for Virgin Money, the sale of Cath Kidston to TA Associates and the acquisition of DFS by Advent.

It also advised on the largest wind farm financing in Norway for Eurus and the sale of STS, the Aberdeen-based underwater vehicle operator, which netted two-thirds of QM’s £7.1m investment gain during the year.

QM’s biggest selling points are its independence and informality. Mr Cormie explains: “We win quite a lot of business from people because they can pop in, we are much less threatening. Traditionally, three blokes in suits turn up with pitch-books and demand two hours of your time, it’s not great for anyone.

“It’s much better if people can pop in for about 10 minutes and you can engage. We are not in sale mode the whole time, we are just saying ‘how are you doing?’”

“It’s a careful balance between so informal that people wonder whether you have a wash before you turn up at a meeting, and being too ostentatious.”

On independence, he says: “We don’t lend money and we don’t have any other products -- we can easily survive on giving good advice and telling the truth.

“Banks are not independent, accountants are not independent -- they want to sell you transaction services, debt, M & A, pensions, consultancy, they want to sell you stuff.”

Digging the knife in further, he promises: “In all of our deals it is the senior blokes who do it...we have three or four things on at the moment, and on the other side of the table it’s a couple of big four accountants and banks -- the main deal-doer is 28 or 29, though actually they don’t do very much. They are running it as a process. Every so often a senior guy might turn up, but we are adding value all the time.”

Mr Cormie remembers the last recession well -- he had just qualified across the road and started in architecture.

“We all lost our jobs. Some went to Hong Kong, I decided to put myself through Cranfield to do an MBA, I thought ‘ I’ve got time, it’s a long game, let’s see what comes out of it’. I went in with few expectations and came out a project financier...though it took me two and a half years to get what I wanted,” he says.

His grandfather was a Scots Guard at Edinburgh Castle, but his father was an accountant. “I was probably a frustrated accountant. What I liked in architecture was the drawing and the adding-up...anything to do with building something big was quite fun, and I was soon financing power stations in the Middle East,” he explains.

Along the way came contacts in big energy companies, including Enron. “I met a lot of people who are now in jail -- and probably quite rightly so,” Mr Cormie says, adding: “They used to hold some good parties though.”

Although former chief executive Mr Norris was head-hunted by Sir Richard Branson to head up his Virgin Group, the connection is still valuable, Mr Cormie notes. “I have no doubt that with Virgin chasing Northern Rock and other assets, we would be involved.”

QM is still 40% in Edinburgh, where its private finance expertise is now used to provide infrastructure advice particularly in the higher education sector throughout the UK.

It also has high hopes of growth for its renewables team. “In the last two years we have gone from nothing to a very good position in the market,” Mr Cormie says.

“We are advising clients, buying and selling assets, and financing them raising debt. We have recruited and we are about to start again -- we are looking for at least two more people.”

QM is attracting attention from overseas utilities and from “UK companies who need some help and are not weighed down by thinking they have to use Goldmans or E & Y”.

On QM’s status as a public company, Mr Cormie is frank about the advantages. “I have yet to see any, but I am still looking,” he says.

“Corporate finance advisory groups are usually more private entities.” Disclosure means investors can see that £900,000 of bonuses were awarded to executives last year, in the “more volatile” rewards culture.

But they also received a 100p special dividend, not for the first time, and they will be looking to the new QM under the open-plan Mr Cormie to continue to spread the largesse around.