David Beveridge

The acquisition is, says Macdonald Henderson’s managing director David Beveridge, evidence of the firm’s continued trajectory of growth and expansion of its key practice specialisms of corporate, property, private client and dispute resolution.

Macdonald Henderson was formed in 1988 and since Mr Beveridge’s management buyout in 2009 it has, he says, developed into one of Scotland’s foremost corporate law firms.

Ranking as a Legal 500 Leading Law Firm in 2025, the firm entered the august publication in 2015 and has achieved ‘ranked’ status every year since. In 2024 its team was ranked number one by number of deals completed in Scotland in the Experian (UK &I) M&A Review for Q1 to Q3 (Scotland).

Looking back, Mr Beveridge recalls it was a particularly challenging time to lead a management buyout. Firstly, he was a youthful 34 when he was offered the opportunity on the retirement of the firm’s founder, Morinne Macdonald. There was also the not insignificant matter of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, which had a dramatic effect on legal firms; indeed, some were holed under the water by the crisis.

“What that gave me however was a unique understanding of the pressures on business owners. When there’s a lack of work or cash flow is reduced it’s incredibly important to steward the firm through even the hardest of environments,” he says.

“That taught us some really important business lessons and life lessons, such as adopting a very rigorous approach to managing the business in terms of processes such as carrying out the work, rendering invoices and collecting monies due.”

In fact, the situation resulted in positive business growth. “Because of what was going on we started a litigation division, which we’d never had before, and while that was to protect the interests of the clients, it was also to ensure we got paid back in those difficult days – so necessity becomes the mother of invention. It embedded in us the DNA of emphasising that law should be approached as a business.”

As a smaller, more agile firm, Macdonald Henderson enjoyed some advantages. “We were expending less energy on the internal discussions of politics and hierarchies than some larger, multi-partner firms and devoting more time to the basics of bringing in the work and being remunerated for it.

“We were also able to focus on what kind of work we wanted to undertake. How do we want to approach it? How do we want to calibrate ourselves in terms of our cost, what kind of markets do we want to appeal to and why would people want to come to this firm? And through that process you develop a more bespoke approach, becoming more thoughtful about the kind of work we were doing, what kind of colleagues we wanted and what message could be put out there to attract the right sort of client.”

That messaging continues to be singularly important to Macdonald Henderson’s approach. The firm is scrupulous, he says, about retaining data on the work it does and sharing it on a monthly basis, which it has done for more than a decade. “When we’re asked to supply information for Experian Market IQ and other publications we can pull that together within an hour or so, including company logos and straplines – so we can share that extremely quickly.”

Thus, on Macdonald Henderson’s website it is possible to swiftly see that, inter alia, the firm in October advised Juniper Group, part of Vela Software and Constellation Software Inc on the acquisition of Traveltek, the travel technology solutions provider; Henderson Stone & Co Ltd, the financial planners on the disposal of its client portfolio to QuilterPLC, the leading financial services company; Neuroclin the independent researcher for treatments on memory impairment, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia on a shareholder buyback; and Genesis OHS, on the acquisition of EcoSafety, the health & safety and training provider; and on the management buyouts of Iolaire Financial  and Home Pool Sales.

The firm primarily appeals, he says, to the owner-managed SMEs that are the entrepreneurial backbone of Scottish business, though there are much larger deals, such as advising Turnkey IPS, the leading provider of software solutions to the insolvency industry earlier this year on an investment by Bowmark Capital, the private equity firm, partnering with the founding family to support the next stage of the company’s development.

Deal values range from £0.5 million up to £100 million.

Mr Beveridge himself had no legal or business heritage in the family. The eldest of eight children from Hamilton, his father is from the north-east of Scotland and was a captain in the Scottish Fisheries Protection Service and his mother a former deputy curator of The Dick Institute (Kilmarnock). After a Glasgow Southside comprehensive education, he took his law degree at the University of Strathclyde.

Then followed a traineeship at McGrigor Donald, since absorbed into Pinsent Masons, including time in London and five years as a corporate lawyer at Maclay Murray & Spens (now Dentons) where he recalls he “was really given a steer and allowed to cut my teeth” under chief executive Magnus Swanson, who first interviewed him and mentored him in corporate law and who he mentions, along with Morinne Macdonald who allowed him the chance to buy Macdonald Henderson, as  two major influences in his career.

It was Mr Swanson who directed him towards the Maggie’s Challenge earlier this year in support of its cancer support in Glasgow. One result was Mr Beveridge recently sporting a ginger beard of impressive length, grown before he joined 13 of the Glasgow’s ‘most wanted’ businesspeople going before (real life) Sheriff Alayne Swanson and being locked up at a secret location in the city with just his mobile and laptop.

Around 109 of the Glasgow business community raised more than £7,500 to bail him out and the Maggie’s Glasgow/Jail or Bailers have raised a total of £84,000 for the charity.

While Mr Beveridge works hard, he also trains hard, with boxing exercise early in the mornings clearly keeping him in shape to be an active colleague as well as a managing director.

“You can’t afford to retreat into some sort of ivory tower in this job,” he avers. “You can’t just say ‘I’m going home guys, make sure that gets done, let me know when it’s done and make sure of your end of the fee. There’s no hiding: you must be in a relationship with your team and be sitting with them in the office at 10pm leading from the front when that’s needed.”

The same goes for clients. According to the Legal 500: “David Beveridge is a master communicator, able to explain the most complex of corporate legal matters to clients and other non-legal parties. His attention to detail is matched only by his extraordinary commitment to clients and to achieving the best possible outcomes.”

He remains, he says, highly motivated – and the acquisition of Ferguson Whyte underlines this. “There’s a lot of younger lawyers working here who want to be part of the team. They get a real buzz out of it and that’s great. It’s something that’s either there or it isn’t – you can’t manufacture it and for me it’s a tremendously rewarding part of being at Macdonald Henderson.”