Investment bank chief Higgins plans to quit upon delivery

Benny Higgins

Mr Higgins was appointed as strategic adviser to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to create the Scottish National Investment Bank after he drew up the original implementation plan for the lender last year.

The Scottish government has committed £2bn to capitalise the bank over the next 10 years and last week it was announced that the legislation to set up the SINB as a public limited company with government funding had been introduced at Holyrood.

Following that announcement, Mr Higgins told The Sunday Times newspaper: “The bank should be up and running in around 14 months or so. After that my job is done and I will leave.”

The bank will focus on scale-up finance and long-term “patient capital” loans of up to 15 years. It is an attempt by Holyrood to tackle the chronic lack of investment in Scotland and revive the stagnant Scottish economy, which has lagged behind the rest of the UK over the past decade.

Higgins also stressed that criticism over whether the £2bn investment was likely to provide the transformational change required for the Scottish economy was unfounded.

“It will have the potential to leverage through additional funding, of course, but even putting just £2bn into the Scottish economy, with the right businesses, is going to have a positive impact on the wider economy,” he said.

Once established, the new bank will absorb the existing Scottish Investment Bank, currently under the aegis of Scottish Enterprise.

Salaries at the bank will be capped but figures released by the Scottish government last week reveal — that once the bank is fully operational — it will have a workforce of 130, costing £18.9m. The bank’s sole shareholder will be the Scottish government.

Although Higgins’s blueprint will ensure the bank enjoys autonomy from the Scottish government, it will invest in sectors agreed with Holyrood, most notably to businesses capable of accelerating Scotland’s transition to a low-carbon economy and those involved in digital connectivity.