Ian Anderson

Died: February 10, 2015.

Ian Anderson, who has died aged 90, was an outstanding Scottish accountant who became eminent in the field of mergers and consolidation, bringing a strong sense of probity and honest, independent scrutiny to the work he carried out.

In a long and distinguished career at the Glasgow-based firm of Thomson McLintock (now part of the KPMG group), he gained a reputation as the archetypal Scottish CA and auditor. His clients, many of them major players in their chosen fields, could not deflect him from his almost legendary objectivity and attention to detail.

That in itself would have been enough but the gold standards of conduct and working practices which Mr Anderson set himself were also of immense benefit to the world of the performing arts when in his spare time he trained his accountant's eye on the finances of leading organisations such as Scottish Opera and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

John Neill Anderson, known to all as Ian, was born in Helensburgh, the younger of Jack and Louise Anderson's two children. The family moved to Lenzie when Ian was a toddler and he attended the local primary school. He then went on to Lenzie Academy before moving to Glasgow Academy to complete his secondary education.

Having decided to embark upon a career in accountancy the teenager went straight from school into the Glasgow firm of Wilson Stirling where he served his apprenticeship. After qualifying as a CA he spent a further three years with the firm before joining city rivals Thomson McLintock in 1951. Within six months he had been appointed manager and became a partner in 1958.

Then in 1964 he took charge of the audit department where, as senior technical partner of the firm, he ran a large portfolio of clients, both listed companies and private firms. His reputation for caution and integrity was enhanced during the late 1960s and early 1970s when take-over fever hit the UK and the canny Scot became immersed in working with merchant banks, accountants' reports and the Stock Exchange.

He was in charge of one of the biggest and most complex deals of the period when Thomson McLintock acted as reporting accountants on the prospectus for insurance brokers Stenhouse Group. At the time it was the biggest single fee the accountancy firm had ever handled. Mr Anderson was at the heart of the project and was heavily involved in the brokers' subsequent merger with Reed Shaw Osler in Canada.

He gave time widely to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, serving on many technical committees, and he also sat on the UK Accounting Standards Committee. He retired in 1986 at the age of 62 though he continued to work as a consultant for some time thereafter.

Mr Anderson met his wife, Moira Crawford, in 1960 on a ski-ing holiday in Switzerland. They married later that year and set up home in Lenzie. Mrs Anderson died in 2012. The couple had two sons.

Though Mr Anderson and his wife had a tremendous and lifelong love of both sport and the arts, it was not until their boys grew up and left home that they were able to seriously enjoy the latter. Selling up the family home in Lenzie and moving to the West End of Glasgow they became actively involved in the city's arts scene, particularly opera and the Glasgow Art Club.

Given his background in accounting, Mr Anderson's expertise was in great demand and he was happy to offer his services to the likes of Scottish Opera and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He became a director of Scottish Opera Theatre Royal Ltd, playing a key role in securing the funding for Scotland's only opera house and joined the RSAMD's board of governors. The Andersons forged new and firm friendships with figures such as Sir Alexander Gibson, Gavin Boyd, Ian Rodger, Walter Wolfe and Sir Philip Ledger. Mr Anderson was awarded a Fellowship from the RSAMD in 1993, a year after he retired from the board.

In later life, the Andersons split their time between their apartment in the West End and their cottage in Kinloch Rannoch before moving to Auchterarder to be near their grand-children.

Ian Anderson is survived by his sons John and Douglas and grand-children Ross, Ellen and Jamie.

ALLAN LAING