Departures of note

Sir Ian Wood was born in Aberdeen on 21 July 1942 and educated at Robert Gordon's College before graduating with a first-class degree in psychology from Aberdeen University in 1964. He joined the family fishing business and took over in 1967, subsequently forming a separate engineering company to service the North Sea oil and gas industry. Under his leadership, Wood Group grew from a modest local company into a global corporation valued at more than £5 billion, operating in over 50 countries. He served as chief executive from 1967 to 2006 and as chairman until 2012.

Wood was one of Scotland's wealthiest people with an estimated net worth of around £1.7 billion. He was knighted in 1994 for services to the offshore oil and gas industry, later promoted to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 2016, and appointed to the Order of the Thistle, Scotland's highest order of chivalry, in 2018. He served as chancellor of Robert Gordon University from 2004 until 2021.

In 2007, Wood and his family established The Wood Foundation, a venture philanthropy organisation focused on education, enterprise, and social impact initiatives worldwide. The foundation applied principles of venture philanthropy, investing both money and expertise to achieve systemic change in areas including young people's development in Scotland and making markets work for the poor in sub-Saharan Africa. He died peacefully at home in Aberdeen on 26 July 2026 at the age of 84, survived by his wife Helen and their three sons.