Finance
Peter de Vink: corporate fixer, dies at 82
Peter de Vink (right) with former RBS chief executive Ross McEwan (pic: Terry Murden)
Peter de Vink, the Netherlands-born businessman and local politician, who adopted Scotland as his homeland in the 1960s, has died aged 82.
De Vink was a flamboyant corporate fixer whose unconventional approach to business was matched by his equally maverick attitude to political life.
He sat as an independent councillor in Midlothian, but managed to portray himself as both a Conservative unionist and a supporter of Scottish independence.
He demanded business-like discipline in local politics and was enthusiastic for new ventures, several times expressing a curiosity about the development and financing of Daily Business when it launched in 2014.
He was born in Amsterdam, at the time occupied by the Nazis, and in 1963, after national service with the army he headed to Scotland to study for a business degree at the University of Edinburgh. He was a contemporary of former Tory minister Malcolm Rifkind.
He joined Ivory and Sime, an Edinburgh-based investment management company, and later launched Edinburgh Financial and General Holdings (EFGH) which played a key role in a number of corporate deals.
He led a campaign on behalf of small shareholders in Royal Bank of Scotland challenging the legality of its 2008 rights issue and raised the matter at its AGM in 2016.
De Vink’s uncompromising style drew both admiration and frustration but he was never ignored.
Peter de Vink was born on 9 October 1940. He died from complications of myeloma on 20 March 2023.
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I was one of Pieter’s best friends and lived around the corner from where he lived in Amsterdam. I was born in May of 1938. So just a couple of years older than Pieter. I have a great group picture with him and his siblings. He looks just about the same. May he rest in Peace!
I now live in Victoria, BC on Vancouver Island.