HIGH-profile accountant Frank Blin is in reflective form on the big issues such as Scottish independence as he prepares to relinquish his position as head of big four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers north of the Border.
Mr Blin, who has had his finger on the pulse of the Scottish economy for decades, said of independence: “I am generally pretty agnostic politically, and I want the best for Scotland.
“I don’t think I have seen a hard-headed business articulation. If you want the change, you have to make the case for change, in part. It is too easy to throw out arguably simplistic observations like, ‘we will have lower tax rates, therefore we will attract more businesses’.”
Citing a need to calculate the value of remaining North Sea resources on a discounted cash-flow basis, he added: “I need to understand the hard-edged business economics. That may be too narrow a view.
“People would say independence) is about confidence, and that is the way you buck the dependency culture and you have got to have belief in the talent and its capability, all of which I admire immensely, but I just think, ‘are we making the most of that at the moment and have we explored how best to achieve that?’.”
However, referring to the First Minister, he added: “At the same time, I think Alex Salmond is by far the most able politician. He is an outstanding ambassador for Scotland, and I don’t suggest for a minute he is not passionate about wanting Scotland to be all it can be.”
Mr Blin, who has been with PwC and its predecessor firms for nearly four decades, and is a past board member of economic development agency Scottish Enterprise, has advised a raft of entrepreneurs, including Sir Tom Hunter and Sir Philip Green. And, back in the late-1980s and early-1990s, Mr Blin handled some of Scotland’s biggest corporate insolvencies and turnarounds.
Asked about his view on the Scottish economic outlook, Mr Blin touched on the eurozone crisis.
He said: “It is interesting, and I don’t say this from any political stance, as we continue to debate aspects of independence, never has there been greater need for more connectivity and more reliance, mutual reliance, as you can see if you are in Europe just now and indeed Europe reaching out to the Far East and/ or America.”
Mr Blin, who will be 58 next May and has in recent days revealed plans to step down from PwC in June, added: “Scotland has still got this inexorable decline of public companies. We have that need to tackle the age-old problem of creating more fast-growth companies, improving our export capability, and building on those fantastic natural strengths we have in certain sectors, ranging from food and drink and the fantastic success of our whisky sector, which just continues to go from strength to strength, to some of the commercialisation of our university research.”
Mr Blin, who plans to build a portfolio of roles which will together amount to a full-time commitment, can see a case for some fiscal easing to help stimulate the flagging Scottish and wider UK economies.
He said of the Coalition Government at Westminster: “I think they have shown a robustness, a consistency, and a clarity, all of which I think is laudable.”
However, he added: “I think we may need to get to a stage where we may need to loosen the ropes a little. We are hearing from clients that taxation levels are high and therefore inhibiting growth.
“Going back to the confidence of consumers around security of employment and spending, something needs to give a little to encourage them and give them leadership.
“That may be a loosening of certain austerity measures, but generally, from my world of turnaround, you have to grab the reins and that is what they have done and you have to be willing to start solving some of the problems. You can’t put it off for evermore.”
Asked about his worst moments in his career, he cited rationalisation following the creation of PwC from the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand in 1998.
Mr Blin, who headed PwC’s “UK regions” between 1998 and 2008 and was a member of the firm’s UK board from 1998 to 2006, said: “When we merged and when we had to do a number of rationalisations in the business across the UK and one had to let go some great colleagues, that was it (the worst moment) really.
“You might say that is soft because I have been doing that in an insolvency environment for years but, when you know all the people involved and their families, it was pretty tough.”
Mr Blin, who has three grown-up children, highlighted the support from wife Rochelle during his career. He said: “(She) has been my biggest support and has the patience of a saint. I don’t know that I would have lived with me over the years.”
Mr Blin, who will be succeeded at the helm of PwC in Scotland by Lindsay Gardiner, head of assurance services at PwC in Scotland, said: “I am running the business through to June. I will be full-tilt.”
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