Inverclyde tycoons Sandy and James Easdale have been named on The Sunday Times Rich List, with a fortune put at £1.363billion.
The brothers, whose firm McGill’s acquired Xplore Dundee in late 2020, are new entrants at number eight on The Sunday Times Scottish Rich List. Their wealth is based upon major transport and property businesses nationally as well as a variety of other enterprises, including many in the Inverclyde area.
James joined soon after and over the years they bought a total of six taxi firms, operating 800 cars.
Although the brothers remain best known for McGill’s, over the years much of their wealth has come from property and construction.
McGill’s, now has more than 400 buses in its own group, with hundreds more operated under Xplore Dundee and other names.
Their commercial empire includes McGill’s Buses, Blairs Windows, ARC Fleet Services, Clyde Metals and Inverclyde Taxis.
Their property investment operations are behind massive projects including the former IBM site in Greenock, another ex-industrial site in Fife, a housing development near Dumbarton, and a hotel proposal for the landmark Watt Brothers building in Glasgow.
Robert Watts, the compiler of The Sunday Times Rich List, said: “Scotland’s richest people have fared less well than those elsewhere in the UK, with half of this year’s 10 Scottish billionaires seeing their fortunes fall over the past year.
“The combined wealth of the country’s 10 billionaires is still up, at nearly 2 per cent in 2021.
“As the economy continues to work through the damage wrought by the pandemic, surging inflation and the disruption to markets caused by the war in Ukraine are now making the business environment difficult.”
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