Irvine Laidlaw, Baron Laidlaw

The son of a Banffshire mill-owner, Laidlaw was educated at Merchiston Castle School, Leeds University and New York City's Columbia Business School.

After graduation, Laidlaw turned a small US publishing company bought in 1973 into the Institute for International Research (IIR), the world's largest conference organiser. After calling off a £500m flotation in 2001 when the market plunged, he sold IIR in 2005 for a sum believed to be in the order of £768m.

In 1988 Laidlaw founded Abbey Business Centres, a subsidiary of IIR providing serviced office space, meeting room facilities and virtual office packages in 13 business centres in Great Britain.[2] The first business centre opened in Glasgow, and soon the company opened up another centre in Slough, Berkshire. Other centres were added, and in 2009 a total of 13 centres made up the organisation.

In 2015, the University of Leeds launched an official opening for the £26 million Laidlaw Library, named after Irvine Laidlaw, who had previously studied economics at the University in the 1960s. His £9 million donation is the largest the university has received from any donor.[3] Laidlaw part owns a $2.1 billion wind-farm project, and earlier this year secured the largest clean-energy financing in 2015 from eight lenders, which included Deutsche Bank AG.[4]

Laidlaw previously owned and raced a Jaguar, which won Le Mans a number of times throughout the 1950s, along with a number of other vintage cars, including a 1962 Ferrari GTO. in 2013, Irvine Laidlaw stopped racing.[4] He recently sold a collection of classic sports cars to raise £17 million.[5]

In 2004, Laidlaw said that he would over the next 20–30 years donate most of his fortune to helping disadvantaged young people. His main vehicle used to be the Laidlaw Youth Project, which supported a range of charitable work for disadvantaged youngsters in Scotland from 2004 to 2007 when it became the Laidlaw Youth Trust (no longer operational). Currently, he is Chairman of the Irvine Laidlaw Foundation, simply known as the Laidlaw Foundation, which he set up to aid the advancement of education, especially the education of deprived young people, in particular by means of grants and other forms of financial assistance to institutions which are engaged in the provision of educational services in any part of the world.[6] The Foundation's activity consists of three core programmes:

• The Laidlaw Undergraduate Research and Leadership Scholarship Programme - as of 2020, the scholarship programme operates in 12 universities around the world: Columbia University, Durham University, National University of Singapore, Trinity College Dublin, Tufts University, University College London, University of Hong Kong, University of Leeds, University of St Andrews, University of Toronto, University of York, and University of Rwanda. Every year, the programme funds cohorts of around 25 students at every institution for two summers to complete a research project with an academic supervisor, and undergo training to develop their leadership skills.[7]

• The Laidlaw Women's Business Education Programme - full and partial scholarships are awarded to women with financial constraints to complete MBA's in order to help them get into senior roles and ultimately achieve gender parity in industries around the world.[8] The programme currently operates in Columbia Business School, London Business School, and in March 2020 it was also announced that Saïd Business School will join as well.[9] So far, Laidlaw donated $2 million to Columbia Business School, £3.69m to London Business School, and £1.35m to Saïd Business School as part of this scholarship programme.

• The Laidlaw Schools Trust - a multi-academy trust founded in 2008,[10] which currently consists of 7 academies in the North East of England with 5500+ students and 850+ staff in total: Excelsior Academy, Academy 360, Atkinson Road Primary Academy, South Hylton Primary Academy, Thomas Walling Primary Academy, Westgate Hill Primary Academy, and Sedgefield Community College.

He has also donated:[11]

• £2 million to The Prince's Trust[12]
• After Moray Council earmarked Rothiemay Primary School for closure, Laidlaw donated funds to a parents campaign which successfully kept 21 schools open
• Donated R9 million to fund the Amakhaya Ngoku housing project[13]
• Laidlaw scholarship at Newcastle University, in which he funds 50% of the funding along with the university.
• Supporting the Glyndebourne Festival production.[14]
• Donating £100,000 to Scottish Opera[15]
• Private investor for Ben Ainslie Racing[16]
• Donor to the Rural Education Access Programme[17]
• £40,000 to Keith Grammar School, to fund a scheme to help senior pupils prepare for the world of work
• £1 million to Merchiston Castle School his former school; despite having disliked attending it, he eventually relented to persuasion by the headmaster and donated this sum. The new sixth-form house at the school, which his donation went some way to financing is named Laidlaw House.
• £9 million to the University of Leeds to support the development of the new undergraduate library, the Laidlaw Library, which opened in May 2015.[18]

In 2007, he set up the Laidlaw Youth Trust which from 2007 to 2009 spent over £6 million in Scotland on good causes related to disadvantaged children and young people. In 2007, in emerged that the Scottish Executive had given sufficient donations to pay the salary of the CEO Laidlaw Youth project, Maureen McGinn – who is also the wife of Scotland's most senior civil servant, Sir John Elvidge.[19]

He closed the Trust in 2009 because he was spending more time in South Africa and said he wanted to focus his charitable giving there. It is not known how much he has gifted in his new adopted country but he was involved in some township housing project.

In 2014, an undergraduate internship scheme was set up at the University of St. Andrews through a donation from Lord Laidlaw who is an honorary graduate of the University.[20]

One of the largest financial backers of the UK's Conservative Party, Laidlaw was made a life peer as Baron Laidlaw, of Rothiemay in Banffshire on 14 June 2004.[21] According to the records of the UK Electoral Commission, on 27 November 2007, Laidlaw gave a donation of £2,990,532.20 to the Conservatives.[22] Laidlaw donated £25,000 to the 2008 London Mayoral election campaign of Boris Johnson.

In 2008, Lord Laidlaw was described by The Guardian as a "Monaco-based tax exile".[23]

Lord Laidlaw was criticised in April 2007 in the press for failing to become UK tax resident despite being appointed to the House of Lords. The BBC said that, in a letter seen by them, Laidlaw "cites a variety of personal reasons" for non-compliance.[24] Criticism by Dennis Stevenson, Baron Stevenson of Coddenham, chair of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, on assurances given to the Commission by Laidlaw to become a UK tax resident by April 2004, were followed by Laidlaw taking leave of absence from the House of Lords.[25] In 2010 following the enactment of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 he stepped down from his seat in the House of Lords to maintain his non-domiciled status and so be able to avoid paying UK residents' taxes.

• Superyacht Lady Christine at Superyacht Times
• Lord Laidlaw at TheyWorkForYou
• Abbey Business Centres
• The Laidlaw Library at the University of Leeds.