Sir Ian Wood, who has died aged 84, was the most extraordinary entrepreneur to emerge from the age of North Sea oil. Starting from a local business base in Aberdeen, centred mainly on the fishing industry, he built an international oil and gas engineering conglomerate that operated in more than 60 countries.
When he stepped down from its leadership in 2013, his creation – Wood Group plc – had grown into a global business valued at $12bn, employing 60,000 people and elevating his personal fortune to around £2bn. The later years of his life were devoted largely to philanthropy, centred around his own carefully chosen projects.
