NO disrespect to the late, great Harry Houdini but he may just about have been outdone by Aberdeen Asset Management's Martin Gilbert in the escape artistry stakes.

Aberdeen this week unveiled a deal to buy Scottish Widows Investment Partnership from Lloyds Banking Group for about £550 million in shares, with up to £100m more payable in cash depending on the fruits of an asset management alliance with the bank.

The City thought it a sweet deal.

Usually, plans to issue a large amount of paper to fund an acquisition might be expected to weigh on the share price. But Aberdeen shares soared after news of the deal on Monday. The shares closed last Friday at 426.8p. They stood at 487p last night, giving the company a stock market value of more than £5.8 billion.

It was all very different little more than a decade ago, when Aberdeen shares traded below 20p amid the fall-out from the UK's split-capital investment trust crisis.

The splits fiasco was estimated at the time to have cost up to 50,000 private investors hundreds of millions of pounds in total, and Aberdeen, although only one of several fund managers involved, was the largest player in the sector. Back in the autumn of 2003, Mr Gilbert declared: "'It has nearly finished us over the last 18 months. It is like an Exocet [missile] going into the business. It almost totally destroyed it."

This reflection from Mr Gilbert came shortly after he pulled off a long-odds manoeuvre which provided the platform for the spectacular recovery achieved by Aberdeen since.

When Edinburgh Fund Managers came up for sale, few would have put money on Mr Gilbert winning the day.

After all, the winning bidder would have to convince the boards of EFM's investment trusts it was the right owner, with reputation a key factor.

Before the splits crisis, this would not have been an issue for Aberdeen. However, by the time Aberdeen was bidding for EFM in 2003, the reputation of Mr Gilbert's investment house had been hammered by the splits crisis.

But Mr Gilbert saw an opportunity.

He was up against Glasgow-based Britannic Asset Management for EFM.

Britannic looked like a solid enough buyer. But it had limited experience of the investment trust industry.

This point would not have escaped Mr Gilbert. He agreed the acquisition of EFM and a back-to-back sale of the Edinburgh investment house's unit trusts to long-time sparring partner John Duffield's New Star Asset Management - allowing Aberdeen to acquire funds but also reduce debt.

EFM proved the key which enabled Aberdeen to free itself from a perilous situation at just the right time, and the rest is history. Boosted by a string of big acquisitions, Aberdeen's funds had climbed to £200.4 billion by the end of September. The SWIP purchase will add about a further £136bn, almost certainly enabling Aberdeen to overtake Schroders to become the largest independent listed fund manager in Europe.

Looking at Aberdeen's share price graph brought to mind another great act of escapology in the Scottish quoted company arena, in entirely different circumstances.

During 2002, Stagecoach's shares sank below 15p as the Perth-based bus and rail company continued to struggle to get to grips with Coach USA, which it had bought in a near-£1.2bn deal in 1999.

Stagecoach co-founder Sir Brian Souter, who was chairman of the company when it bought Coach USA, moved back into the driver's seat to sort out the troubles. He took radical action, jettisoning the lead weights which were weighing Stagecoach down by closing large parts of the US bus operation. Stagecoach's shares closed last night at 353.3p - giving it a stock market worth of more than £2bn.

So what can we learn from these two very different stories?

Although in different industries, Mr Gilbert and Sir Brian appear to have a great deal in common. Both are high-profile, charismatic leaders who, as co-founders of their businesses, know them inside out.

Both are accountants who can drill into the detail but they also have the vital knack of spotting the big opportunities, based on a vision of how their sectors are likely to move and where their businesses need to be positioned. They give the impression of leading almost by intuition, and of being adept at not becoming bogged down in the day-to-day issues.

Crucially, both are also well aware of what makes people tick, whether it be in running their businesses, doing deals, or negotiating with funders.

Much of this is common sense.

But there is an astounding lack of common sense in some corporate strategies, no doubt fuelled from time to time by management consultants with one-size-fits-all strategies who do not know in intimate terms the industries of those they are advising.

There are some bizarre notions. Banks implement massive job cuts and talk about how their restructuring will help improve customer service.

Mr Gilbert and Sir Brian are strong leaders who trust their own judgment, apply basic common sense and psychology, and can see what is important and what is not. Admittedly, they might make it look easy, when it is not. But far too many of their fellow corporate chiefs seem determined to tie themselves in knots.