BRIAN Souter and his sister, Ann Gloag, the founders of Stagecoach, are the highest-placed Scots in a list of the UK's 100 top entrepreneurs compiled by Enterprise Magazine.
Together they share the number six spot, with Gloag the highest-placed woman in the table.
Eight Scots made it into the top 100, where individuals were assessed on three criteria - their personal wealth, the percentage increase in business sales over the last five years, and the percentage increase in employment over the same period.
Rangers chief David Murray, who derives most of his wealth from metals trading, took 37th spot, John Boyle, the founder of Glasgow-based Direct Holidays, came in at 39, and Arnold Clark, the car trader, at 41.
Maq Rasul, the owner of Global Video, was placed 50, Sir Tom Farmer of Kwik-Fit came in at 80, Aberdeen housebuilder Stewart Milne at 84, and Donald Munro of Strathclyde Pharmaceuticals at 85.
Britain's leading entrepreneur, according to the survey, is James Dyson, who invented the bagless vacuum cleaner.
His Dyson Appliances factory in Wiltshire employs 1050 staff and its sales have mushroomed from #9m five years ago to #165m today. Dyson himself is credited with a net worth of #400m.
But he still has some way to go to catch up with Souter, the executive chairman of Stagecoach. The annual turnover of the Perth-based transport group topped the #1000m mark last year, and Souter has a personal fortune of #560m. Stagecoach, which now embraces trains and airports as well as buses, employs more than 31,000 people around the world.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article