WHEN he was appointed three years ago to head the independent inquiry into the collapse of Equitable Life, George Penrose was known as a no-nonsense judge capable of taking tough and controversial decisions.

At 65, he is one of Scotland's most senior high court judges, who is also a qualified accountant with special expertise in commercial law.

Five years ago, he ruled that a five-year-old girl should be adopted, despite acknowledging it could have a devastating effect on her mother, who had a long history of mental illness.

He said at the time: ''The risk of irreparable damage to the natural mother is real, but one must have regard to the interests of the child as a paramount consideration.''

Lord Penrose trained in both law and accountancy at Glasgow University, where his peers included Lord Irvine of Lairg, who went on to become lord chancellor. He was called to the bar in 1964 and became a QC in 1978.

Between 1984 and 1990, he also served as procurator for the general assembly of the Church of Scotland.

He became Scotland's first full-time commercial judge in 1994, but since then he has continued to deal with criminal cases too. Lord Penrose is married with a son and two daughters.

On Equitable Life, his brief from the Treasury was to go back ''many years, even decades'' to identify the lessons that should be learned for the ''conduct, administration, and regulation of life assurance''.

His inquiry, which was launched in August 2001, is the third into the society but, unlike the previous two, Lord Penrose was not given a specific timeframe to work within, leaving him free to look at events going as far back as the 1950s.

The Baird report, carried out by Ronnie Baird, the Financial Services Authority's director of internal audit, previously looked into the FSA's handling of Equitable.

It concluded that while there were areas where the FSA could have done better, there was nothing the regulator could have done to prevent the problems at the society when it took over as regulator in January 1999.

A report by Ann Abraham, the parliamentary ombudsman, also looked at the role played by the FSA between January 1999 and December 2000. She found there was no evidence that it had failed in its regulatory responsibilities.