Oily capitalists

Ian Suttie is currently ranked at 13th on Scotland's Rich List with an estimated fortune of £340 million. But the Aberdeen-based tycoon might overtake both metals magnate Mahdi al Tajir, worth about £1.55bn, and Sir Ian Wood, head of the Wood Group and worth £1.119bn, as a result of his company's stake in a significant oil find. Suttie is head of First Oil & Gas, an independent company which has a 30 per cent stake in the Kraken Field discovery. His firm's potential share is estimated at about £3.2bn. Even after development and tax costs, First Oil and Mr Suttie stand to gain more than £1bn once the field begins producing oil in 2015.

Suttie, a director of 40 companies, has had a chequered career since he started out as a chartered accountant. Nine years ago, he took over the Richards textile factory in Aberdeen after the Broadford plant, once one of the city's leading employers, went bust, leaving hundreds of workers without a pension. As part of the deal, the sprawling 8.5-acre site was sold for £5m to a company called Hawkrow, of which Mr Suttie was the sole director. Mr Suttie moved the company's operations to the Northfield area of the city. But the textile firm he created went into receivership in November 2004, leaving the 196 remaining workers without a job. Union leaders accused him of asset-stripping after it was revealed that First Construction, the successor company to Hawkrow, was behind ambitious plans for a £50m urban village development at the Broadford site.

In November 2005, he was cleared of cheating the Inland Revenue out of thousands of pounds in tax which should have been paid on the interest on one of his bank accounts. He had been charged with four counts of fraud in connection with his tax returns over a four-year period, but walked free after he told his trial at the Sheriff Court in Aberdeen he was unaware that his £1m Bank of Scotland account at the centre of the case was an interest- bearing account because he never looked at his statements!

From http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Slick-oilman-surges-to-billionaire.6843883.jp