Love story behind Optos vision

You will seldom find a love story in the business pages of this or any other newspaper. On an average day journalists of my ilk spend hours trawling through company accounts, speaking to business leaders and watching the progress of the various FTSE indices.

At the end of the day, business is a relatively transparent world of success and failure where the bottom line is king and there is little room for sentiment.

But scratch below that bald veneer and the business world can be, in turn, fascinating, perplexing and inspiring.

Few know, for example, that vital parts for spacecraft are designed and engineered from a nondescript office off Dundee’s Perth Road.

Or that parts for cutting-edge defence systems deployed on aircraft and naval ships in fleets across the globe are produced in Fife.

Or indeed that Fife is also responsible for packaging for those highest of high-end French cosmetics houses.

Oh, and there’s the century-old jute merchant which grew into a global textiles business that went on to produce the artificial playing surface used in the Super Bowl.

They are all terrific back stories and, believe me, I could go on spouting similar tales for days given half a chance.

But there are seldom few examples of corporate success in these parts that I can attribute to love. Well until last week that is. On Friday, Dunfermline-based medical devices firm Optos secured its little corner in the annals of Scottish corporate history when Japanese photography and imaging giant Nikon came in with a £260 million offer for the company.

That is an extraordinary sum of money by anyone’s standards and, when it concludes as expected in late spring, it will stand out as one of the largest corporate acquisitions ever seen in Fife.

Now that makes for great copy for a business editor as everyone loves a ‘local lad done good’type of story and Optos has quite plainly done good.

The terms of the deal looks favourable on the surface with a commitment to maintain jobs and to keep the firm’s headquarters where it is. Great stuff.

But you may well be asking what this has to do with love.

Well the back story of our quarter-of-abillion-pound corporate champion is about the unbreakable bond between a father and his child .

More than 20 years ago a young boy called Leif Anderson was struck blind in one eye.

The five-year-old had been having regular eye examinations but he sadly lost his sight after a retinal detachment was spotted too late.

That tragic incident spurred his dad Douglas into action.

He was determined other children would not suffer in the same manner as Leif had and set out to create a patient- friendly imaging device that could capture an image of the entire retina.

To do so was no mean feat and involved many years of development work alongside colleagues David Cairns and Robert Henderson.

But incredibly they succeeded in their mission and Optos emerged.

Fourteen years after its foundation, Optos floated on the stock exchange and it has continued to pursue its sight-saving mission ever since.

Healthcare is a notoriously competitive game and it is fair to say that Optos has had its share of ups and downs in the intervening years.

But it is now a global player in its field and with annual revenues topping $170m it really is no surprise that a large corporate like Nikon has come calling.

That was all inspired by a father’s love for an innocent child.

If it was not real life it could easily be a film script.