Billionaire Aberdeen oil tycoon Ian Suttie has snapped up a stake in another oil company.
The First Oil chairman – one of Scotland’s richest men – has taken a 5% stake in Edinburgh-based Bowleven. The firm announced yesterday that it has raised £13.3million through a new share issue, which will be used to fund work in Cameroon.
Mr Suttie is understood to have paid just under £9million for 19.4million shares, which will allow him to appoint a director to the board.
Earlier this year, First Oil took a 30% stake in Bowleven’s Kenyan subsidiary.
Publicity-shy Mr Suttie was ranked 12th in Scotland in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated personal wealth of £450million.
The 67-year-old is a director of several companies. His business interests include First Oil, which describes itself as the largest private, UK-owned company producing oil and gas in the North Sea.
He is expected to receive a multimillion-pound return from a North Sea oil find part-owned by another of his companies, First Oil and Gas.
The business has a stake in the Kraken development, estimated to have recoverable reserves of 160million barrels.
Earlier this year he became chairman of Global Integrated Services, which was taken over by the Calum and Stuart Melville last year. He also has plans to create a £50million urban village at Broadford Works in Aberdeen through one of his other companies, First Construction.
The Scottish Government granted conditional approval earlier this year for a multimillion-pound redevelopment of the former industrial complex bounded by Maberly Street, Ann Street and Hutcheon Street.
Bowleven trades on the Alternative Investment Market, and its preliminary annual results, released yesterday, revealed that it has a cash balance of £12.5million.
Chief executive Kevin Hart said: “We are pleased with the considerable progress made on our path to development in Cameroon and in so doing, pursuing our stated objective of converting resources to reserves.”
They are looking to produce their first gas in Cameroon by the second half of 2016.