Entrepreneur Jim McColl, who last week completed a $1 billion ( “We now have a major presence in most of the main markets, including significant positions in China and India, and I think one more acquisition in somewhere like Saudi Arabia would give us coverage in the Middle East,” McColl said. “Our growth plans will mainly be organic but if the opportunity to do another deal comes along we’d look at it.”

The Textron deal was backed by four banks and private equity and McColl believes any future deals will be structured in a similar way. “I do think that for the foreseeable future, it will be a range of banks rather than just one as we did in the past,” he said.

“It was a hard deal because we started talking to Textron just at the start of the credit crunch. In the current climate banks take longer and want to do even more due diligence which does mean that you can miss out.

“We initially spoke to Textron about one division and they said they were interested in selling the others which fitted well with our ambitions. However, that made it more complicated and took some time to complete.”

McColl said that he was feeling very optimistic about the opportunities that the engineering sector could offer his companies.

“The emerging markets are good for us but there are a lot of big infrastructure projects coming up in Europe, like updating the nuclear industry in France and the UK, which we hope to play a part in.

“This is also a big boost for Clyde Pumps at Cathcart and we have now set up a design team there which underlines our commitment to Glasgow.”