News

Adrian Grace Edinburgh-based life and pensions firm Aegon UK has delivered a jump in first quarter profits driven by an upturn in demand for its online retirement planning service.

L to R: Derek Duncan, Partner at RSB macdonald; Lesley Macdonald, Partner at RSB macdonald; (at front) Alasdair Cummings, Managing Partner, Lindsays; (at back right) Derek Petrie, Partner, Lindsays. Scottish law firms RSB macdonald and Lindsays are set to merge with effect from 6 July 2015, both com

Sarah Speirs House prices in Scotland rose in April ahead of the General Election with 31 per cent more surveyors reporting house price increases, according to the latest RICS UK Residential Market Survey.

Eileen Blackburn Eileen Blackburn is head of business recovery and Barry Laurie is a tax partner at French Duncan Chartered Accountants

Sir Ian Wood NHS Grampian has accepted a £10 million donation from the Wood Foundation to develop a multi storey car park at the Foresterhill Health Campus in Aberdeen.

Four men have pleaded guilty for corruption following an investigation into the allocation of public building work contracts at the City of Edinburgh Council. Former council employees Charles Owenson, 62, and James Costello, 44, received tens of thousands of pounds worth of bribes from an Edinburgh-

Unemployment in Scotland has risen by 19,000 to reach 168,000 during the first quarter of the year. Official figures from the Office for National Statistics show an unemployment rate of 6 per cent north of the border, compared with 5.5 per cent for the whole of the UK.

Sir Gerry Grimstone Edinburgh-based insurance giant Standard Life has re-emerged within financial advice arena after completing the acquisition of wealth manager Pearson Jones from Skipton Building Society.

Martin Watt and James Dickie. Aberdeenshire-based craft-beer group and crowdfunding pioneer BrewDog has raised £5 million in just 20 days as a result of its latest round of fundraising.

Credit ratings agency Fitch has placed the Clydesdale Bank on its 'rating watch negative' list following last week’s news that it is to demerge from Australian parent company, National Australia Bank. It means that the Glasgow-based lender, which includes Yorkshire Bank, is likely to have its cred

Marcelino Castrillo Royal Bank of Scotland has announced that Marcelino Castrillo, formerly managing director of SME banking at Santander, is to join the bank in the same role within it business banking division.

Supermarket giant Tesco has named Deloitte as its new auditor. The new arrangement ends a 32-year relationship between the retailer and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Antonio Horta-Osario The UK Treasury has sold another tranche of shares in taxpayer-backed Lloyds Banking Group, which it bailout at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.

Edinburgh-based global asset manager, Standard Life Investments, has awarded its prestigious Annual Finance Working Paper Prize to an academic paper which investigates corporate lobbying. The winning paper, “The corporate value of (corrupt) lobbying”, by Dr Alexander Borisov, Assistant Professor

Mid-tier Scottish accountancy firm French Duncan has signed up to a corporate partnership agreement with National Theatre of Scotland that will see it sponsor an upcoming performance of The Driver’s Seat at The Lyceum in Edinburgh next month.