Giving back: Peter Vardy’s driving passion to put Scotland on the world stage
“If we can have a small impact on a larger stage it would be a great ambition for the Foundation to have.”
It’s fair to say the past year has been a pretty frantic one for Peter Vardy, chief executive of the eponymous automotive business founded in Scotland almost two decades ago.
A major deal signed at the tail end of 2024 saw the group sell the majority of its car showroom sites to Parks Automotive. Three dealerships, representing Jaguar Land Rover, Mini, BMW, Omoda and Jaecoo, changed hands in Motherwell, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. It followed the earlier sale of six franchises to Arnold Clark and the closure of its Carz-branded used car supermarkets in the wake of the pandemic and some well-publicised supply shortages.
The sweeping restructure of the business empire has seen Vardy retain its two state-of-the-art Porsche centres in Aberdeen and Perth, having represented the prestigious German sports car brand for the past ten years.
At the same time, the Motherwell-based group, now operating under the Peter Vardy Global umbrella, has been accelerating its other interests and scaling up ventures such as motor finance brokerage CarMoney. A recent recruitment drive saw the business create new sales advisory, finance, compliance, customer service and administrative roles as it continues to grow its presence across the UK.
The group also encompasses FlexAuto, a start-up disruptor providing “flexible vehicle mobility solutions for today’s drivers”, and Gen+, a leadership and meta-skills programme founded by the Peter Vardy Foundation that aims to get into every school in Scotland.
Vardy, whose father Sir Peter Vardy grew Reg Vardy into one of the UK’s largest car dealership groups before its sale in 2006, insists that business can be a powerful force for good. Reflecting on the 19 years or so since Peter Vardy Ltd was founded in the wake of that Reg Vardy deal, he told The Scotsman: “We’ve always tried to do something that’s next generation in business. Make it the best place to work and the best place to buy from and we knew you would get the right financial results if you got those two things right. But we also wanted a ‘give back’ culture.
“We have created about £200 million of enterprise value over that time and of that we’ve given about £15m away. In that journey there have been some real highs and there’s been some lows. Closing the car supermarkets after Covid was a very difficult thing to do.
“The best bit has been the relationships. I was fortunate to recruit some great people and we did a whole load of training programmes that saw young people come through.”
The addition of “Global” into the new group naming seems apt. The investment arm currently has 11 holdings, with eight of those overseas. The aim with most is to take a majority stake in the business going forward.
Vardy is looking to take the success the family has had in starting and scaling businesses, along with its decades of automotive know-how to nurture fresh ideas emerging in the sector.
“What we’d like to do is use some of the resources that we have built up to find successful start-up businesses in finance, mobility and automotive in general and see if we can help entrepreneurs scale up their ventures,” asserts Vardy. “We are quite excited about that. It’s a very friendly private equity angle.
“We want to remain in automotive and the areas we understand well and have had some success in. We hope to lean into more technology-focused opportunities if we are looking at future investments. CarMoney is a great technology play. We are not leaving behind what we’ve been doing for some time.”
As the group looks to build on its ethos of giving back, Vardy is also keen to get the ball rolling on a leadership programme that extends beyond schoolkids and into the adult world. The “values-based” initiative will have at its core a national leadership gathering, dubbed The Calling.
Earmarked for November 2026, the ambitious event promises to blend keynote talks, stories from Scottish leaders, creative elements, such as music, film and interviews, and interactive workshops. It will be targeted at leaders across public life - spanning education, business, civic roles and community organisations. An audience of up to 3,000 is anticipated.
Leaders
Details have yet to be fleshed out, but Vardy is keen to bring “some of the world’s best leaders” to the event, which he hopes to make an annual fixture.
“I’m in a fortunate position where the business has grown and done well,” he says. “I’m based in Scotland and very passionate about Scotland and would like to be a small cog in a wheel of seeing Scotland do better.
“It will be a values-based leadership programme that celebrates what the country does well but also challenges people to think bigger. We are really excited about it. If we can have a small impact on a larger stage it would be a great ambition for the Foundation to have.”
Vardy is equally passionate about the potential for Gen+ and the wider philanthropic aims of the group’s Foundation.
“I am not ignoring the business side,” he stresses. “We have nearly 400 people employed and want to grow that side of things. I am excited about the next chapter. But, if you’re asking where my heart is, then the Foundation has done more than I thought it could ever do and I think it can do a lot more.
“Scotland has its problems and we need to solve some of them rather than pointing at the government or somebody else.”
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