Bill Gammell

Scottish business executive and international rugby player. Gammell played rugby union for the Scottish national team. He scored two tries on his debut for Scotland, against Ireland at Murrayfield in 1977, but his career was cut short by injury. He was a school friend of Tony Blair, who as UK Prime Minister recommended Gammell for a knighthood for services to Scottish industry Using venture capital, he founded Cairn Energy in Edinburgh. The company invested in several unsuccessful oilfields in the US before making a modest strike in the Pennsylvania oilfield. Gammell was appointed Cairn's Chief Executive on its initial listing in 1989. In the mid 1990s he led the company in a radical reallocation of its assets, moving out of US and North Sea oil and gas concerns and into neglected fields in South Asia. The company's fortunes soared in 2004, when a field it had bought in 2001 (for $7.5 million) from Shell in the Indian province of Rajasthan was found to contain close to 1.1 billion barrels of oil, catapulting it into the FTSE 100. Gammell's father invested in US oil company Bush-Overbey, owned by future US President George H. W. Bush. The two families became friends, with George W. Bush spending the summer at the Gammell's farm in Scotland. George W. attended Bill Gammell's wedding in Glasgow in 1983. The two have remained close friends. When George W. Bush assumed the Presidency, both he and Blair reportedly called their mutual friend Gammell to ask his opinion of the other. Link to Wikipedia