The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Bus brothers enter rich list in eighth spot
The billionaire owners of a Dundee bus firm are newcomers to the list of Scotland’s wealthiest people.
Sandy and James Easdale, whose firm McGill’s acquired Xplore Dundee in late 2020, are new entrants at number eight on The Sunday Times Scottish Rich List with a net worth of £1.363 billion.
The list is topped by Danish businessman Anders Holch Povlsen, whose wealth tops £6bn.
The siblings founded Greenock-headquartered McGill’s in 2001, and last summer, they revealed they had made investments of more than £10 million in Xplore Dundee.
The brothers were not even teenagers when they started working with their father Jim at his scrapyard in Greenock.
Although the brothers remain best known for McGill’s, over the years much of their wealth has come from property and construction.
McGill’s, now has more than 400 buses in its own group, with hundreds more operated under Xplore Dundee and other names.
They also own a network of factories making window frames, glass and other construction products.
Mr Povlsen, with wealth of £6.5bn, is the richest person in Scotland, according to the list.
The 49-year-old is Scotland’s largest landowner, owning 220,000 acres and is also the biggest shareholder in fashion brand ASOS.
There are 10 billionaires at the head of the 2022 Scottish rich list, with combined wealth of £23.054bn.
Sixth on the list is Mahdi al-Tajir, once Scotland’s richest man and owner of Perthshire-based Highland Spring.
The 90-year-old tycoon, who lives at Keir House close to Bridge of Allan, is worth £1.6bn, down £2m in the past 12 months.
The Thomson family, owners of DC Thomson, are seventh in the list with a wealth of £1.5bn.
DC Thomson publishes newspapers and magazines and has diversified into new media, digital technology, retail and television interests.
The family-firm owns newspapers The Courier and Evening Telegraph in Dundee.
Robert Watts, who compiles the Sunday Times rich list, said: “Scotland’s richest people have fared less well than those elsewhere in the UK.
“Half of this year’s 10 Scottish billionaires saw their fortunes fall over the past year.
“The combined wealth of the country’s 10 billionaires is still up, at nearly 2% on 2021.
“As the economy continues to work through the damage wrought by the pandemic, surging inflation and the disruption to markets caused by the war in Ukraine are now making the business environment difficult.”