Dr Robert Buchan is an international businessman and highly successful entrepreneur. He’s driven forward the creation of a number of mining companies and is widely admired for his business acumen. With this level of achievement you might expect a clear plan to lie behind his success but Bob explains that serendipity has played a key role in his career:

“When I chose my undergraduate degree at Heriot-Watt I picked mining because I thought it looked easy! My aim was not to follow in my family’s tradition of fishing, so mining offered a possible alternative. It was undoubtedly a random choice.”

 After graduating he came across an opportunity to study an MSc at Queen’s University in Canada and thought it would be an interesting way to discover another country:

“I had no real plan of what I might do with the qualification and it was actually quite a cultural shock to be in Canada: very different to Scotland. However, I saw that Canada was a genuine meritocracy and that anyone might be able to succeed here. It just so happened that my study time in the country coincided with the Canadian Government changing the rules for landed immigrant status which meant I was able to apply to be a resident while in the country. Had I arrived a year later, I would’ve had to leave Canada after my studies and applied for residency from Scotland. I’m not sure that would have happened.”

Initially Bob worked for a mining equipment company but he moved into finance after meeting his neighbour:

“Yes, it was a serendipitous meeting. I was fascinated by the work, and lifestyle, of my neighbour who was a portfolio manager in finance. It inspired me to seek work as an analyst, and without knowing how to achieve that, I simply selected the first three stockbrokers out of the Yellow Pages and wrote asking them to employ me as one. I got lucky, A.E. Ames offered me a position.”

I realised I could run a company

Through his work as an analyst Bob entered the world of finance and the stock market and met the people who were wheeling and dealing in the sector:

“It opened my eyes to the kinds of people who were running companies. I thought they would all have incredibly high IQs and was somewhat disappointed to find that wasn’t the case. But it made me realise that CEOs were not exceptional intellectuals – it was their attitude and application that mattered. This insight changed my life: I realised I could run a company.”

So in 1993 he set up his first mining company, Kinross Gold, which he grew into the world’s sixth-largest gold producer. Later he formed Katanga Mining Ltd, which by the time he left, had a market value of more than US$1 billion. His next highly successful company was Allied Nevada, which he still chairs:

Bob Buchan with Professor Steve Chapman

“The trouble with being an entrepreneur is that you’re never happy. You’re always wondering what’s over the next hill and setting yourself another mountain to climb. I consider it a very demanding mistress which continually drives you to do more, and constantly pushes you to see what’s possible.”

Bob went onto lead a number of other mining companies and to become a dedicated philanthropist, supporting a wide range of organisations including the Whitlock Energy Collaboration Centre at Carnegie College, Fife, and the Robert M Buchan Department of Mining at Queen’s University, Ontario. In 2013 he donated £1.3 million to Heriot-Watt, our single largest donation from an individual to date, to create the Robert M Buchan Chair in Sustainable Energy Engineering.

Click here to read more about the Chair and what it will help the University to achieve.

Bob Buchan with Professor Mercedes Maroto Valer, the Robert M Buchan Chair in Sustainable Energy Engineering