The family of Scottish businessman and philanthropist Sir Ian Wood have announced that he “died peacefully at home” in Aberdeen at the age of 84 on Sunday (July 26).
Born in Aberdeen on July 21, 1942, Sir Ian attended Robert Gordon's College and the University of Aberdeen, where he graduated in 1964 with a degree in psychology.
He joined the family fishing business, becoming managing director in 1967, and was responsible for transforming it from a relatively small operation to a huge multinational engineering and consulting business operating in over 50 countries.
He created the Wood Group in 1982 and served as chief executive until 2006 and chairman until 2012. By the time it was acquired by Dubai engineering firm Sidera it employed more than 35,000 people globally.
The success of the company resulted in Sir Ian becoming one of Scotland’s wealthiest men, with an estimated net worth of around £1.7 billion (2020
In 2007, Wood and his family set up The Wood Foundation, a philanthropic organisation dedicated to donating millions of pounds every year to “people, ideas and businesses with the potential to create lasting change” across Scotland and Africa.
Here are 16 fascinating quotes from Sir Ian.
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13. Sir Ian Wood on...being inspired to become a philanthropist
"In 1960, I went to a very poor black township in Cape Town as part of a scholarship and I spent a week with a doctor who devoted two weeks a month, free, to providing medical services. There was a quarter-mile-long queue waiting to see her and I sat beside her and listened and watched. It completely reoriented my outlook to just how privileged we were in our western world." | Ian MacNicol
14. Sir Ian Wood on...fatherhood
"If you’ve got kids and they are healthy, reasonably well-adjusted and family-orientated, everything else is secondary." | Contributed
15. Sir Ian Wood on...caring
"I think caring is a much better word than philanthropy. You don’t necessarily need to give away a lot of money. Some of the finest philanthropic people I know haven’t given away money, they’ve given their lives. The doctors and nurses I meet in Africa, for example. They’re way ahead of what I do." | Johnston Press
16. Sir Ian Wood on...investing
"I don’t have a huge knowledge of investments, so we choose really good investment managers, some of whom are clearly based on what they call sustainable investment. Sometimes when we invest, we will say we don’t want to do this or that, but it’s not a major issue." | Contributed