Herald

Eight Scottish firms honoured as bank shows big is beautiful

Royal Bank of Scotland has become the biggest company ever to scoop a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, after the break-neck pace of growth at its Citizens Financial subsidiary in the US impressed judges for the prestigious awards.
The Edinburgh-headquartered banking giant heads a list of eight Scottish companies honoured in the awards that are seen as the business equivalent of the Oscars, up from five last year.
Amid the range of firms collecting awards, policy-makers will be especially pleased to see Controlled Therapeutics and RFX recognised for their obstetrics treatment, and communications technologies, respectively, in the Innovation category.
Success in the hi-tech section contrasts with last year, when Scottish companies failed to win any awards for innovation.
Winning the Queen’s Award sets the seal on a period of dramatic growth at Royal Bank and marks official recognition for its transformation from a local player into a global force.
The award in the international trade category is made to companies demonstrating substantial growth in overseas earnings over at least three years. Exports have to reach “levels that are outstanding for the goods or services concerned and for the size of an applicant’s organisation”.
Royal, which has entered itself for the awards for several years, finally made the grade after another year of rapid earnings growth by Citizens. In the last year, Citizens enjoyed a 53% jump in underlying profits to £766m because of acquisitions and good organic growth. Group underlying pre-tax profits rose 12% to £6.4bn.
Larry Fish, head of Citizens, earned £3.35m pay, compared with £2.58m for Royal group chief executive Fred Goodwin.
The operation continued its expansion last Friday with the $285m (£182m) cash acquisition of Port Financial Corporation, the holding company for Massachusetts savings bank Cambridgeport.
“We are absolutely thrilled. It’s a particular credit to Citizens for all that they have achieved,” said a spokeswoman for Royal.
She laughed off suggestions a bank of Royal’s size would gain little kudos form an awards scheme which mostly honours the slog of small and medium –sized firms which are out of the public eye.
“It’s still an accolade to be picked out,” she said. It’s tremendous for staff in terms of getting external recognition of all the hard work they have done.”
All the other Scottish Award winners were SMEs, including RFX, which produces high-precision quartz gadgets for communications systems in Livingston. It has just seven employees.
Controlled Therapeutics, based in East Kilbride, is a subsidiary of Cytokine Pharmosciences of the US.
In the International Trade category, IPA Energy Consulting, an Edinburgh-based firm which advises on energy markets, was recognised for its success winning work in markets such as Africa and Russia.
Trinity International Services, an Aberdeen-based provider of catering and hotel management services for the oil and gas industry, won an award for doubling exports.
Univation, the commercial arm of Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University, won recognition for its success in selling services such as training overseas.
International Trade awards were also won by Fresh Catch a Peterhead-based exporter of white and pelagic fish, and Excell Biotech, a subsidiary of Canada Qbiogene, which develops products for use in pre-clinical trials of drugs.
Companies selected for awards by a panel of experts headed by Sir Andrew Turnbull cabinet secretary, can use the award scheme’s flag logo in all marketing materials for five years.

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