Reclusive Edinburgh fund manager Walter Scott awarded himself one of the biggest remuneration packages in Scottish corporate history last year before selling his eponymous investment boutique to US bank Mellon Financial.

The 60-year-old trained nuclear physicist, famed for his unashamedly "Scottish" and highly successful marketing in the US, took dividends totalling £19.6m as a 70% shareholder. These came on top of a £3.5m salary, assuming Scott was the highest-paid director.

Scott's £23m package dwarfs the £10m in pay and dividends taken in 2006 by Aberdeen housebuilder Stewart Milne.

Co-owners Alan McFarlane, the managing director with 20%, and co-founder and finance director Marilyn Harrison with 10%, also enjoyed a lucrative year. McFarlane's pro rata share of the dividends was £5.6m and Harrison's £2.8m.

The pay-outs are disclosed in the annual accounts to April 2006 of Walter Scott & Partners, obtained from Companies House. Most of the cash came in the form of a £19.1m interim dividend and the rest as a final dividend of £8.8m approved by the directors but not paid before the year-end.

Walter Scott & Partners is assumed to have paid both amounts before being taken over in May.

The sums pale into relative insignificance, however, when set alongside the £400m which the trio were understood to have shared when they sold to Mellon. That jackpot pay-out - in cash and shares, some of which was thought to be deferred - was among the biggest yet earned by the founder of a Scottish business.

Walter Scott & Partners, founded in 1983, had £14.3bn under management at the time of the takeover - more than the £12bn at neighbour Martin Currie, and dwarfing the £2bn managed in Edinburgh by the former Ivory & Sime business, now F&C Asset Management.

Scott's company posted a pre-tax profit of £33.6m on turnover of £57.3m in 2005-06, up from £18m and £33m respectively in the previous 12 months.

Walter Scott's headquarters, at 14 Charlotte Square, were home to the Ivory & Sime dynasty, which spawned some of the UK's most successful fund managers including Scott himself, Stewart Newton, whose firm was also acquired by Mellon in 1998, and later the founders of Aberforth Partners and Artemis.

In December, Walter Scott & Partners got its second new owner in less than a year when Mellon Financial was snapped up by Bank of New York.

No-one at Walter Scott was available for comment.