The recruitment of Sir Angus Grossart to take the chair of the new Scottish Futures Trust is a coup for the Scottish Government and one of the more audacious challenges taken on in a long history of canny risk-taking by the 71-year old financier.

His name was nearly all that John Swinney could add to the slow progress of his bid to replace past government's approaches to getting private money behind public sector investment. Without it, the ministerial statement would have looked threadbare, with business and opposition lining up to complain about delays, lack of workflow and broken promises.

Knocking the wind out their sails, the challenge is now for Sir Angus to make the anti-profiteering rhetoric into an attractive package for profit-seeking financiers.

He is a well-connected figure with a dry humour and enjoyment of life, work and culture, who says little publicly. It is not who you know, he reckons, so much as "how you move". His rise to the top of Edinburgh finance was as something of an outsider. Born in Lanarkshire, he was schooled at Glasgow Academy and studied law at Glasgow University. He proudly recalls honing his business skills at a Barrowlands stall selling reject toffee.

A tax lawyer and advocate from 1963, his dealings with London financiers heading north showed the potential for a Scottish investment bank. Noble Grossart was founded in 1969, and the company chairman remains a formidably networked adviser and investor, much of its portfolio across a wide range of Scottish companies.

This year's annual results showed an 81% rise in profits to £14.7m, with its top salary, assumed to be its chairman's, topping £500,000, on top of his 72% shareholding.

Sir Angus has a voracious appetite for deal-making, acting as a mentor to those starting out and a trusted financial adviser to those who have made it in Scottish business.

They include Sir David Murray and Brian Souter, joining in the buy-out of Alexander Dennis buses in Falkirk.

When he was vice- chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, he is credited with playing a significant role in its expansion and acquisition strategy, and he was a key boardroom player in the sale of Scottish and Newcastle earlier this year.

But as with his long-time chairmanship of Scottish Investment Trust, he was pushed out of the Royal Bank by London financiers who complained about potentially conflicting roles in the boardroom as well as well-paid adviser. One of the main movers against him in 2004 was quoted saying: "He seems to be infected with a sense of his immortality and his own ability to make things happen. He does seem to have an unnecessarily Scottish view of the world."

That is the perfect qualification for SNP ministers to seek his services. Sir Angus has not declared his support for Scottish independence, but his decision to head the Scottish Futures Trust is in line with a succession of public-spirited boardroom appointments beyond corporate life.

A patron of the visual arts with his wife, Gay, a painter, he was chair of the National Galleries of Scotland.

He now chairs the National Museums of Scotland and is a trustee of Culture and Sport Glasgow.

Commenting on his appointment yesterday, it was clear he relishes the challenge of the new and unknown.

But being worth an estimated £150m, and an adviser to those with much more, a key test of the Scottish Futures Trust will whether he would put all that money where John Swinney's mouth is.