IMAGINE the typical dynastic offspring. An immediate picture comes to mind. Rich, arrogant, spoilt, probably stupid. And intent, naturally, on wasting away the fortune their parent struggled, sweated and slaved to create.
David Murray – son and heir to the man who made money from metal but fame from football – is nothing like your imagining.
He is, by his own admission, rather different from his flamboyant, outspoken and sometimes impulsive father is, by his own a
dmission, rather different from his flamboyant, outspoken and sometimes impulsive father.
Murray junior is quietly spoken. Considered. Careful. It is, he says, to do with both his personality and his education.
Time at Harvard and London business schools, experience in the IMG sports marketing company, time at the Bank of Scotland.
That has made him different from his up-and-at-em dad. David junior thinks a lot. He studies shares, spreadsheets and results. But the differences between father and son are only in manner and method: they are united in a joint determination to secure the future of the Murray brand. And the Murray millions. As he sits his beautiful Georgian office in Edinburgh's Charlotte Square – the First Minister is a near neighbour – Murray is clear about his role as managing director of Murray Capital, a wholly-owned subsidiary of his father's main company.
"I am trying to create a sustainable model so I can create a legacy for the Murray brand – what my father created 35, 36 years ago, the metals business. I want that Murray brand to go on for the next 35, 36 years, but in a slightly different way.
"Murray Capital is part of the evolution to try to create the sustainable investment which, hopefully my family and beyond will get the benefits of."
To do that he has created what he calls a "family investment office" not "a 'me-too' venture capitalist" outfit. It is, he says, "distinct from a private-equity type firm" and there are largely unnoticed role model firms he admires across the UK and Europe. "These companies have shown that they may not necessarily knock the lights out like some of the private equity hedge funds, but they will probably still be here in ten years.
"I doubt if some of these exotic fund manager or investment managers will be here in ten years' time."
Murray claims that, when he invests, his company is "more supportive" and takes a "partnership approach" to investments.
"I have got to be convinced when I do that deal that I am not going to lose that money. If I lose that money, it's going to hurt.
"With other, more traditional, large private equity firms, if they lose money they just move on to the next gig."
Examples of his style are the revitalisation of Falkirk's bus builder, Alexander Dennis, and Glenrothes-based cabling company Brand Rex. Murray Capital invested, insisted on changes, but has stayed for the long term.
And it is a specifically Scottish firm. Though he carefully avoids political questions by refusing to give a view on matters such as fiscal autonomy, there is a distinct Caledonian outlook. "We are Scottish-based and looking at Scottish investments.
"The one caveat is that we're looking at Scottish companies, but they need to have an international dimension or international aspirations.
"If we are looking at companies just going to be focused on the Scottish economies, we would struggle to see the growth and opportunity."
But why Scottish focused? The general investment community has "vacated Scotland", he says. "Their models are driven around bigger deals, bigger fees and more volume, whereas we're not. We can justify looking at the types of deals we do in Scotland."
The nearest he gets to politics is to suggest something that could help Scotland prosper economically. Companies should be less risk averse. The danger is that firms adopt "a lifestyle mode", working only for a salary and a dividend. We would not invest in a company like that."
But that does not stop Murray, 34, keeping looking. His education conditions him to do a lot of homework before he invests. But there is more to it than that.
"We can go and do the numbers, do the spreadsheets and returns until the cows come home, but if I have a gut feel and a view on that management team that they are not right, we just don't do the deal.
"Nine times out of ten, that's what the decision comes down to. I have walked away from deals where the returns look great, but I could not believe in that person to deliver it."
And Murray has targets. He has £60 million under management and, under the watchful eye of the chairman – his father – aims to grow that to £100m within five years.
So how does that father-son relationship work in business? "Fine, yes. He leaves me to get on with it. He has an entrepreneurial style and I have an entrepreneurial instinct.
"But our styles are different. I am more of a business manager who has had a different type of education background.
"It works well because he has that creative, entrepreneurial spirit and I try and blend it with a bit more of the business structure and strategy."
Was business always his destiny? "No. Nothing was expected of me. My father never put me under any pressure to be involved in the business; it has just happened by accident or default, or whatever way you want to put it."
WHAT if it were said that he owes it all to his father – that he was nothing more than a daddy's boy? "If there was that criticism, all I would ask people to do is look at my track record, things I have achieved both financially and non-financially.
"Hopefully, that question would be dissolved a bit. But there is always gong to be that in the family, nepotism, always going to be an element of that.
"The only thing I can do is keep on doing what I am doing, growing assets under management. Hopefully, that speaks for itself."
And what of the ultimate question for the legacy: the next generation beyond him?
Wife Sarah, a businesswoman who runs the Sarah Davidson fashion boutique in the New Town, is pregnant and due to give birth next month.
Murray jokes that that means there is "a succession plan". Would he like his son or daughter to go into business?
Yes, he would: "I would encourage them, like my father did to me, to come to their own conclusions.
"But they would have to prove they had the skills and appetite to do it. If they didn't, that's not a problem … but that's a few years down the road."
The full article contains 1135 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
