With McColl, it is about more than just money

The sale of Clyde Union Pumps was a surprise to all concerned. Only two weeks ago McColl announced record results and was proving to the world that manufacturing not only had a future but could expand and flourish.

His decision to sell Clyde Union to the US Fortune 500 company SPX Corporation came after months of talks during which McColl demanded assurances that the new owner would commit to the company, the former Weir Pumps business on Glasgow’s southside which he acquired in 2007.

McColl had a special reason for wanting to secure the plant’s future: it gave him his first job as a 16-year-old apprentice and his “emotional investment” was clearly evident in the statement he issued yesterday.

The £750 million sale price will provide McColl with what he modestly described as a “big number” pay-off, though he endearingly stated that “this is about more than money”.

McColl emerged as the plant’s saviour when Weir Group decided it no longer wanted the business and he has gone on to ramp up output, profits and employee numbers in a way no-one thought likely and at a time when other engineering works were closing or struggling to make a decent margin. Weir Pumps was on the brink of closure and its successor is now a thriving world-class business headquartered in the city. He is amply qualified to be the poster boy for the campaign to rebalance the economy.

McColl has built a still-expanding business empire, but also puts in many shifts working with the unemployed and other worthy causes. However, he stands out among the most high profile Scots entrepreneurs as being without a knighthood. Tax exile or not, his time must surely come.

End of an era but, by all accounts, not of innovation

THE blogosphere has been hyperventilating over the announcement that Steve Jobs has resigned as chief executive of Apple. Gadget fans everywhere are frantic with worry over the future of a company that has come to define an era of communications and have treated the news as a spiritual as much as a technical and commercial loss.

Google’s Vic Gundotra, recalling the Apple co-founder’s attention to detail, wrote how he’d received a call from Jobs while he was in church. It was 6 January 2008. 6 January? Well, that just happens to be the date of the epiphany, the manifestation of Christ to the magi. It’s no mere coincidence. Some of the references to Jobs make religious worship look like faint praise. One IT website headlined the announcement as “Steve Jobs resigns, steps down on health grounds; world shocked”. You don’t get much more iconic than that.

Without Jobs, it is argued there would be no iPod, iTunes or iPhone. Add to that list the iPad which emerged after his most recent leave of absence through illness. His return to work was announced with the US stock markets closed for Martin Luther King day. Whether deliberately timed or not it saved Apple’s stock from an almost inevitable mauling. However, European markets were open and in Germany, the stock dipped by more than 6 per cent.

Jobs’ stature is such that when he made a similar decision to step aside due to illness two years ago, Apple’s stock had to be suspended to prevent it from going into freefall. Sources claim he is worth upwards of $30 billion to a company which only earlier this month became the most valuable in the world.

Jobs, who will remain as chairman, accepted that the day has come when “I can no longer meet my duties” and he hands over day-to-day control to Tim Cook, the chief operating officer, whose elevation as Jobs’ successor has been the subject of speculation since the latest health scare.

It is said that an expectation of his eventual departure is now factored in to the shares, but shareholders and Apple fans alike will be comforted and intrigued by his claim that Apple’s “brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it”.

That should also send shivers through its rivals who have been forced to follow his and the company’s lead.