NICOLA Sturgeon has confirmed a previously secret meeting with the US fund manager paying George Osborne £650,000-a-year after it leaked in the press.
The First Minister’s office rushed out a parliamentary answer acknowledging a “business meeting” with BlackRock in New York earlier this month.
The firm pays the former Tory Chancellor £162,500 per quarter for a day’s work a week.
Ms Sturgeon also met global finance giant Morgan Stanley in the city “to further develop the relationships with key inward investors”.
BlackRock and Morgan Stanley have bases in Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively.
The Tories accused the First Minister of secrecy, as the meetings were first revealed by the financial journalist Iain Martin.
Mr Martin wrote on his blog that while Ms Sturgeon had boasted of other meetings in the US, she had been silent on the financial firms, “almost as though they don’t ?quite fit with Sturgeon’s progressive image aimed at her left of centre base in the West of Scotland”.
He said the SNP government also initially refused to confirm or deny the meetings took place, saying some meetings with “stakeholders” that were “not media-facing”.
The episode has echoes of Ms Sturgeon’s collapsed £10bn investment deal with a Chinese huckster last year, which appeared in the Chinese press before being confirmed at home.
Tory economy spokesman Dean Lockhart said: “Nicola Sturgeon raced to every camera available in America when it suited her.
“Yet now, just like the Chinese investment shambles, we only find out about important meetings between the First Minister and potential investors through leaks and media reports."
Ms Sturgeon’s spokesman said: “This is a bizarre attack by the Tories. The First Minister meets with businesses and potential investors all the time and makes no apology for doing so.
“If the Tories want to try and scare away valuable investment and jobs from Scotland, they are going the right way about it with ridiculous statements like this.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel