Scotland’s largest independent grant-maker, the Robertson Trust, reaches its 64th birthday in 2025. This unique trust – the legacy of the three Robertson sisters, Agnes, Elspeth and Babs, who made their fortunes in the Scotch whisky industry – is on course to invest more than £200m in Scotland’s third sector by the end of this decade.
The trust benefits from the dividends it receives from the Glasgow-based Edrington Group, which owns The Macallan, Highland Park and Brugal rum, distilled in the Dominican Republic.
With the UK Treasury borrowing record amounts to fight poverty and deprivation in the UK, the Robertson Trust is aligned with the work of the Scottish and UK governments, but makes its own grant decisions on educational and work pathways, financial security, and on emotional wellbeing and relationships.
Jim McCormick, who has been the trust’s CEO for the last four years, will be working with a new chair, Morag McNeill, and some new trustees in January. McNeill is a former corporate lawyer and partner at McGrigors, now Pinsent Masons, and among her directorships, she has been the chair of Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL), the controversial arms-length quango responsible for Scotland’s ferries and harbours.
She arrives at a critical juncture for the trust after Edrington unexpectedly decided to sell its Famous Grouse and Naked Malts brands to William Grant & Sons, Scotland’s largest family-run spirits company, and the makers of Glenfiddich, a malt whisky rival to The Macallan. The deal is awaiting approval from the mergers and acquisition regulator.
In the months ahead, the trust’s board will be examining its position and may well consider cashing in its golden stake in Edrington – worth several hundred million pounds – and then using its massive fund to leverage far bigger social investment projects in Scotland.
McCormick, who was the first in his Renfrewshire family to attend university, worked with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in Scotland before taking over at the Robertson Trust. He may well dismiss any speculation about such a move, but he’s clear about the immediate challenges.
“We are 13 years on from the Christie Commission [former STUC general-secretary Campbell Christie’s report on the future delivery of public service in Scotland]. It remains one of the most powerful pieces of work in the devolution era to our mind. It told us the value of prevention and participation in public services, but we have been blown a long way off course,” he says.
Scotland must get back on course with investment in public services to save money in the long-term, argues McCormick.
“So many of our partners do this kind of work well but many more have had to stop that preventative work because they are doing so much fire fighting,” he says.
“The spirit of Christie needs to be rekindled. It is a brilliant piece of work that has stood the test of time.”
Beyond any speculation on the future of the Edrington shares, the Robertson Trust will be using its financial muscle in a more farreaching way.
“We are fortunate to have an excellent investment committee and very good advisers, and we’ve made a lot of progress. Our board have agreed to a five per cent carve-out from our investments. That means we will have up to £29 million available for social impact investing. That will be a new offer from us to social enterprises and charities in the form of affordable loan capital. To start with we are not going to invest directly into organisations, we will go through expert partners and various brokers.”
The trust has set up an investment committee and Tom Bennett, who specialises in asset-backed investments such as affordable housing, is an adviser.
We’re willing to be very patient to build this up for Scotland properly. What we’ve spotted already is that there are gaps in the landscape, if you map it onto our mission
As The Business went to press, this recommendation was being made to the trustee board about the first social investment. “We think we can run this on a really lean basis in the interim, until we decide whether we want to build this in-house. We won’t be open for application but will be – through our discovery work – identifying the strongest aligned funds for investment.”
‘Alignment’ means the project has to benefit Scotland and be aimed at those having the toughest time in Scotland.
“Our model would be that we’d put money into one of the third sector intermediaries.”
This could be organisations such as Social Investment Scotland, where McNeill has been the vice chair, Social Sustainable Capital, Better Society Capital, or Foundation Scotland.
“We are not experts. We invest into one of their funds and charities and institutions borrow from those funds. We’re building a fund-of-fund approach. In terms of the spectrum of risk and return, we expect to do everything from very concessionary capital, which is not targeting a financial return but targeting high social impact in a way that goes beyond what our grant-making can do, up to investments with a financial return with our investment portfolio, which is Consumer Price Index (CPI) plus four.
“Over the long term, most of what we do will be somewhere in the middle with a modest return. But non-zero. We’re willing to be very patient to build this up for Scotland properly. What we’ve spotted already is that there are gaps in the landscape, if you map it onto our mission.”
McCormick is particularly interested in being the catalyst in the overlapping areas between renewable energy assets and community ownership for lower income communities. He cites the Kilbirnie wind farm project, Scotland’s first subsidy-free 100 per cent community-owned wind turbine, as an exemplar.
“Yes, 100 per cent profits to the community, significantly above what most community benefit programmes are offering. So we’re really interested in the fuel poverty angle in this.”
However, any prospects that disadvantaged communities across Scotland might similarly benefit from the renewables boom must be tempered by the massive constraints.
Neil Copeland, of NESO, the National Energy Systems Operators, told a conference in Glasgow that there is no guarantee that new renewable energy projects will be given access to the National Grid unless they have planning permission, enabling infrastructure, and are ready for transmission. This is massively costly for communities that don’t have the necessary expertise to benefit from the renewables bonanza.
“We expected to do some asset backed investment around affordable housing. We’re interested in affordable credit. We are looking at education and work and social investment opportunities. We’re thoughtful on Scotland’s dreadful record on drugs-deaths, and in homelessness and offending. That will be a potential gap as well.”
McCormick is clear that the country cannot go on just investing in day-to-day crisis services and not do anything to shift the root causes of poverty. ‘Demand failure’ results in people falling back into a cycle of reoffending, or a cycle of having to attend A&E or becoming regular users of crisis services.
“We’re trying to model in microcosm because we are a drop in the ocean compared with government. We’re trying to model the importance of protecting money both for day-to-day, mitigation support and crisis responding and while that hopefully reduces over time, we want to build up funding for long-term prevention. We don’t see governments doing this.”
The Robertson sisters created their trust in 1961 but there is no right to expect that the parent whisky company will continue to make massive amounts of profit. So what is the vision for the next 50 years?
“The Robertson Trust has been here for over 60 years. If there is a mandate – and that comes from society – to continue long-term, I would hope with a new mission, because we have been successful with our poverty mission, then we may still be here long after this.
“We are aiming to have a relative balance long term between the dividend we are privileged to take from Edrington’s profits and our investment income which we have been building steadily through diversification. That gives us resilience in the long term.”