GOOD YEAR

RAY ENTWISTLE

When in June Hampden & Co opened its doors in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, and St James in London, it became the UK's first new private bank in 30 years. It was a personal triumph for veteran banker Ray Entwistle, the former chairman of Adam & Company, who grafted for five years to bring the project to fruition after getting himself first in the queue to obtain a banking licence under the government's new streamlined process.

It took three years longer than he had hoped, but Mr Entwistle raised almost £50million in capital from 250 shareholders, navigated the dangers of a Yes vote, and is bullish about the bank’s first year performance.

He has a team of over 50 and has promised to train apprentices in old-fashioned banking.

MIKE WELCH  

Entrepreneur Mike Welch sold his online tyre business Blackcircles to French giant Michelin in a £50m deal which netted him around £16m. The 36-year-old, who was named as Scotland's emerging entrepreneur of the year by Entrepreneurial Scotland in 2014, intends to stay with the company he founded in Peebles before moving its main base to Edinburgh.  

The year saw him launch the Pit Stop chain of fitting stations, which he hopes to grow rapidly on sites provided by partners . The first was at Glasgow’s Silverburn shopping centre’s Tesco, whose former chief executive Sir Terry Leahy was one of Mr Welch’s backers with a 25per cent stake.  After 13 years he has grown the business to £30m turnover and a workforce of 65.

MATT MCGRATH

Young inventor Matt McGrath who refused to licence out his product but built a company over 14 years got his reward in 2015, when Edinburgh-based Aircraft Medical was sold for £73m to Dublin-based Medtronic. The deal valued the founder’s stake at around £38m. He invented the video-laryngoscope to try and win a national student design award in 1999, founded the business in 2001, and ran it off credit cards until he landed backing from the Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust and Scottish Co-investment Fund. A roll call of private backers were rewarded in the sale, including former HBOS chairman Lord Dennis Stevenson and the Marquis of Linlithgow. Mr McGrath intends to continue to work with Medtronic as consultant and adviser.

DAVID THORBURN

The man who began the year as Clydesdale Bank’s chief executive stepped down in February, but picked up a full year’s salary of £460,000 for his five months work. Around £270,000 was said to be pay in lieu of notice, though Mr Thorburn had said it was his decision to stand down rather than pilot the bank through a likely flotation. The timing also meant that Mr Thorburn had disappeared when in April the bank was fined £20.7m for PPI complaint handling failings including deleting and falsifying information, which the regulator described as “unacceptable”. The year got better for Mr Thorburn when at the end of July he was appointed an independent member of the board of the Prudential Regulation Authority.

BAD YEAR

KEITH COCHRANE

For most of Keith Cochrane’s six-year tenure as chief executive at Weir Group, the Glasgow pump-maker has been a stock market darling as its key oil and mining sector customers boomed. Its shares hit 2600p in 2014, when it had an all-share bid for Finnish rival Metso rebuffed, and they opened 2015 at 1850p. But on February 25 they began a downhill slide as Mr Cochrane warned the group had been over-optimistic about recovery in the oil sector, and announced 1200 lay-offs. The stock left the FTSE-100 in September and third quarter results in November showed oil and gas unit operating profits (roughly half of the total) hadshrunk by two-thirds. In December the shares sank below 1000p, their lowest since early in Mr Cochrane’s reign.

DAVID RITCHIE

The man installed as chief executive at Havelock Europa in May knew he had no time to waste in diversifying the interiors manufacturer. But in September he had to unveil a profit warning, the second in a year, along with plans to cut the workforce by 10 per cent. The Kirkcaldy-based group’s underlying loss of £1.8m in the traditionally weaker first half was a slight improvement on 2014. But in late November came the bombshell of losing its biggest customer Lloyds Banking Group, the bank which gave Havelock entry into the sector in the 1990s. With market value barely half its level on his arrival, Mr Ritchie now aims to create three roughly equal businesses in retail, financial and educational interiors.

ASHLEY HIGHFIELD

Johnston Press shares sank to new lows in 2015, despite Mr Highfield’s continuing upbeat commentary on the group’s digital strategy. After a first half which saw all regional publishers hit by steep falls in print advertising revenues, Johnston reported a 14.7 per cent decline in the third quarter following a 9.5per cent fall in the first half. The all-important digital revenues were up by 8.4 per cent, after rising 17.5 per cent in the first half, while total revenues were down 8.8 per cent. The shares were at 207p at the end of May after a consolidation, the equivalent level to their nadir in October 2011 when Mr Highfield arrived as chief executive. In early December they dipped below 40p, valuing the group at around £43m.