Entrepreneur wins top business award
MOIDART-BASED entrepreneur and investor Angus MacDonald has won a top UK award for entrepreneurship.
The West Highland-based businessman was awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year award at the 11th annual Spears Wealth Management Awards, known as ‘The Oscars of City finance’ at London’s Dorchester Hotel last Tuesday.
Mr MacDonald’s business interests include the education publisher ICSLearn, the wind turbine supplier Renewable Parts Ltd and the fast-growing waste management company SWR.
He first made his name in the 1990s and 2000s by building two financial publishing firms.
In 1990 he founded Edinburgh Financial Publishing, which was sold to Barra Inc in 1997 for £12m. He then refinanced Financial News and became chief executive officer and launched the City jobs site efinancialcareers which he sold for a combined £79m in 2007 to Dow Jones and two private equity businesses.
The judges’ citation praised MacDonald as ‘a serial entrepreneur with a conscience, with a genuine love of the West Highlands of Scotland’.
Awarded the OBE in 2014 for services to the Highlands, Mr MacDonald also heads the Moidart Trust, a ‘venture philanthropy’ fund that helps grow West Highland businesses. He said he was ‘delighted to have won’ adding ‘it demonstrates that UK wide businesses can be built from this part of the world’. He said: ‘I am passionate about this beautiful and diverse area of Scotland and devote a lot of my time trying to helping West Highland entrepreneurs stay in the area and thrive here.’
Mr MacDonald is also the founder of the Caledonian Challenge, an annual corporate endurance race, and is a vice president and a leading fundraiser for the National Trust for Scotland.