Wealth Manager: Murray Mackay of Williams de Broe on how the company plans to double assets to £10bn

Murray Mackay is truly an affable character and one who takes obvious pride in his Edinburgh investment house.

Williams de Broe moved into the contemporary four-floor office block around 18 months ago and drafted in a string quartet to play at its celebratory public unveiling.

‘The band played behind this boardroom and when I walked in, it was a sight to behold. It sounds clichéd but the atmosphere was electric,’ Mackay recalls.

The company has flourished since, expanding its geographical reach and snapping up the investment management division of Kaupthing, Singer & Friedlander. The deal involved buying the company out of receivership and it added more than £1 billion to the stockbroker’s assets, ramping them up to around £5 billion.

It was an acquisition thought to have propelled WdB as group into the top 10 list of independent discretionary fund managers in the UK. And it followed the news that around £150 million of business had been lured from Barclays Wealth, in addition to a further seven of the company’s most talented employees.

The growth strategy appears to have worked but the ambitious Mackay has plans to broaden the business’s appeal even further.

‘As a company, WdB has said it wants to grow its assets from around £5 billion to £10 billion in three years,’ he says. ‘This will not just happen organically, but through the acquisition of businesses and teams by the seven offices.’

Mackay takes a keen interest in the training and development of his 29 staff, bringing in Glasgow-based company Kissing with Confidence to enhance abilities within his team.

Laughing, he says: ‘It’s a fabulous thing to do and I’d highly recommend it to anyone, though it’s not about kissing. It teaches and reinforces all the things we are meant to do in business networking.