Member Profile - Wright, Johnston Mackenzie

Member Spotlight

Angus MacLeod

Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie

agm@wjm.co.uk

www.wjm.co.uk

Wright Johnston and Mackenzie (WJM) have recently arrived in Inverness but they are certainly not a young company – in fact existing for 157 years. Legal services over the years have increasingly specialised but Wright, Johnston and Mackenzie have deliberately kept high levels of expertise in a wide range of services so that they are able to get the global picture of any of their clients’ businesses and be in a position to help whatever the client needs. Their aim is to not just react to clients’ problems but to help them avoid problems in the first place, and apply this through their “Client-Centric”™ approach, which developed from the firm’s market-leading practice in advising family businesses.

15 years ago WJM became involved in the Centre for Family Enterprise and co-sponsored the Centre for a while. This involvement set the firm on the road to a unique and detailed understanding of why family businesses are different - and why they need and deserve a different approach from their advisors. Family businesses do of course face many of the same issues as other businesses, but the involvement of a family dimension means the solution is not always the “usual” one diagnosed by advisors – a more sensitive and creative approach is required.

You could be mistaken for thinking that all their clients are small family businesses but they in fact deal with private individuals, entrepreneurs of all kinds, family businesses of significant scale, major PLCs and some well known names such as Vodafone, E.on, Npower, KPMG, HSBC, Clydesdale and Lloyds TSB.

Angus himself has a background in intellectual property, having worked with Roslin Institute helping to commercialise its cutting edge genetics and genomics research (think Dolly the Sheep.) He is the head of the WJM franchising team, having taken it to the number 1 team in Scotland for 5 years in a row, to date. Angus was originally from Inverness, attending Millburn Academy and then heading off to Glasgow University. He then spent 19 years in Glasgow and joined Wright, Johnson and Mackenzie in the early stages of his career. In 2005 he became a partner and moved into mergers and acquisitions, private equity and commercial contract work, and then became head of the firm’s Corporate group before moving to Inverness to open the firm’s office there.

It is clear that Wright, Johnston and Mackenzie like to do things differently – since moving to Inverness they have become actively involved in the local business network. Angus has been described as the “perfect boss” who always has a smile on his face. It’s clear he loves his work and that he has a genuine enthusiasm for working collaboratively with clients to steer around upcoming business obstacles rather than crashing directly into them. The legal service provision in Inverness is surely improved by the addition of such a great asset and of course the back up of an experienced and valuable team.