Heriot-Watt Tops Scotland for CEOs, 20th in Britain

Heriot-Watt University leads Scotland on a LinkedIn count of alumni who style themselves chief executive or managing director, at 4.57%. The same table, compiled by invoice-finance house Novuna Business Cash Flow, places the Edinburgh university 20th in the United Kingdom.

University of Cumbria sits first in Britain at 8.27%, about 1.8 times the Heriot-Watt rate. Two years earlier a Novuna scrape of the same kind put Heriot-Watt first in the UK at 15.76%.

Scotland’s CEO Crown Stops at 20th in Britain

On 15 May 2025 Heriot-Watt said it produced the highest percentage of CEOs and MDs in Scotland. Novuna had published the underlying study four days earlier, timed for A-level season, after reviewing more than 10 million LinkedIn alumni profiles across more than 120 UK universities.

Professor Angus Laing, executive dean of Edinburgh Business School, welcomed the Scottish placing. “This recognition is a testament to Heriot-Watt’s long-standing commitment to enterprise-focused education,” he said. In the university magazine he added that it was “a remarkable achievement, especially for a university of our size.”

Size is the wrong comparison. Rate is the whole method. Cumbria, logged by Novuna as 123rd in the 2025 Complete University Guide, outruns Cambridge, Oxford and the London School of Economics on this measure. Heriot-Watt, 42nd on that same guide column, is the only Scottish name in the CEO and MD top 20.

SELECTED CEO AND MD RATES

Among Heriot-Watt alumni who hit the filter, the top fields of study on LinkedIn were business administration and management, general business and commerce, and general finance. That is a conventional business-school mix, not the art-and-design path Novuna highlighted among founders.

How Novuna Counted Those Titles

The percentages are not a count of FTSE boards, Companies House directors, or HESA graduate jobs. They are a filter on each university’s public LinkedIn Alumni page, run between 1 and 17 April 2025.

WHAT THE FILTER KEPT

• The titles: Alumni who held Founder, CEO, or Managing Director at some point from 2005 to 2024.
• The share: That filtered group as a percentage of the alumni LinkedIn returned for the university.
• The courses: The top fields listed under What they studied on those same profiles.
• The league column: Overall rank from the 2025 Complete University Guide, used only as context.

The method does not check whether someone graduated, how large the firm was, or whether CEO meant a listed group or a one-person company. It treats every matching job title as a success. Scotland’s average CEO and MD share on this basis is 3.60%, so 4.57% is a real lead inside the country. London’s average is 4.35%, which means Heriot-Watt sits only a fraction above the capital’s mean.

15.76% Became 4.57% on the Same Kind of Score

Heriot-Watt has used Novuna’s LinkedIn counts before, and the published rate has not been stable. The university’s own 2023 announcement said a Novuna report across 121 universities and 9.7 million profiles found that 15.76% of Heriot-Watt graduates had moved into CEO or MD roles, the highest share in the UK. It also said the university was first in Scotland and sixth in the UK for the number of entrepreneurs it produced.

Laing called that 2023 result a reaffirmation of Heriot-Watt as “the incubator of the UK’s future business leaders.” John Atkinson, then Novuna’s head of commercial business, said success was not exclusive to premier universities “as traditionally perceived.”

THREE NOVUNA LINKEDIN SCRAPES

1. June 2021: Hitachi Capital Invoice Finance, Novuna’s predecessor, reads nearly 8.5 million profiles at 121 universities. Heriot-Watt is 24th in the UK at 9.37% and first in Scotland. LSE leads Britain at 15.98%.
2. 14 September 2023: Novuna’s next CEO and MD table, covering alumni from 2003 to 2022, puts Heriot-Watt first in the UK at 15.76%.
3. 11 May 2025: The latest table, covering 2005 to 2024, puts Cumbria first at 8.27% and Heriot-Watt 20th at 4.57%, still first in Scotland.

Those are three published scores from the same lender family, not a payroll of sitting chief executives. LSE, Cambridge and Oxford barely moved between the 2023 and 2025 CEO tables. Heriot-Watt’s published share did. The 2025 Watt Magazine still billed the Scottish title as a repeat win. It did not mention the fall from UK first to UK 20th.

The Invoice House That Paid for the Table

Novuna Business Cash Flow is not a careers body. It is the invoice-finance arm of Mitsubishi HC Capital UK PLC, the brand that replaced Hitachi Capital Invoice Finance on 14 February 2022. Its product is working capital for firms that release funds tied up in unpaid invoices, with advances advertised up to 90% and funds often within 24 hours. The division says it provides over £2bn a year to more than 1,000 SMEs.

The customer for that product is very often a managing director of a private company, which is the same job title the ranking treats as the prize. Atkinson, now head of commercial and strategy, tied the 2025 tables to exam season and to “thinking beyond traditional paths.” “Whether someone’s future lies in founding a business or leading one, there’s more than one route to success,” he said.

That line does useful work for a cash-flow lender. It also describes why a university at 123rd on a standard academic guide can top a title-density table, and why a Scottish technical university can lead its country while sitting in the UK’s third ten.

Edinburgh Beats Heriot-Watt on Founders

Novuna ran a second league for alumni who used the title Founder. Heriot-Watt is absent from that top 20. Two other Scottish universities are on it. The University of Edinburgh is 13th at 5.23%, with economics, history and computer science as the leading fields. The University of St Andrews is 17th at 4.87%, led by economics, international relations and business administration.

Founders cluster in London. Twelve of the 20 highest founder shares sit in the capital, and the regional average there is 5.34%. Scotland’s founder average is 3.23%. University of the Arts London leads the founder table at 10.01%, on design, art and fashion, which is the pattern Novuna sold as the surprise of the study.

So the Scottish “leadership” result is narrow. Heriot-Watt wins the CEO and MD title rate inside Scotland. It does not lead Scotland on founders, and it does not lead Britain on either list in 2025.

A CEO Title That Fits a Small Firm

The UK winner has said out loud what the filter actually captures. Tracey Slaven, chief transformation officer at the University of Cumbria, discussed the 8.27% figure in 2026 and declined to dress it as a conveyor belt into giant corporations.

The results reflect the great entrepreneurial culture we have here. But being a CEO doesn’t always mean leading a huge organisation. Often it’s about knowing what you want to do and have a go at it. It speaks to confidence, risk-taking, and willingness to take next steps.

Tracey Slaven, chief transformation officer, University of Cumbria

That is a fair reading of a LinkedIn title scrape. It is also a different claim from “summiting the corporate ladder,” the phrase Heriot-Watt used about Cumbria’s 8.27%. Deputy vice-chancellor Professor Brian Webster-Henderson OBE said Cumbria graduates were making an impact in over 100 countries, which may be true and still says nothing about firm size.

Heriot-Watt’s own alumni pages point to a second pipeline that title counts will pick up. Edinburgh Business School lists over 50,000 graduates worldwide, and the university now cites more than 27,000 students and an alumni network of over 182,000. The school launched its first online MBA in 1990. Watt Magazine’s specimen “MD/CEO” in the 2025 leadership feature is Adebowale Adesona, who took charge of Coronation Life Assurance in Nigeria in 2023 after dual master’s degrees in actuarial science and actuarial management. That is a real chief executive. It is not a story about who runs corporate Scotland.

Operators From a Mechanics Institute

The vocational reading fits the institution’s own history. Heriot-Watt began in 1821 as the Edinburgh School of Arts, which it calls the world’s first Mechanics Institute, set up by Leonard Horner and Robert Bryson to teach working people. The Watt Club, formed in 1854, is the university’s alumni association. A royal charter in 1966 created the modern university. Campuses followed in Orkney, the Scottish Borders, Dubai in 2005 and Putrajaya, Malaysia, in 2014. Edinburgh Business School opened Panmure House, Adam Smith’s former home, in 2018.

A mechanics institute that went global through an online MBA will mint people who put CEO or MD on LinkedIn. Some of them run insurers and banks. Some run small firms that buy invoice finance. Novuna’s table counts both as the same event. On that score Heriot-Watt is first in Scotland at 4.57% and 20th in the UK, and Cumbria is still first in Britain at 8.27%.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did Novuna decide who counted as a CEO or MD?

Fieldwork ran from 1 to 17 April 2025. Researchers opened each university’s official LinkedIn Alumni section and kept people whose job titles included Founder, CEO, or Managing Director at any point from 2005 to 2024, then expressed that group as a share of the alumni the page returned. Course lists came from the What they studied field on those same profiles, not from university registries.

Which subjects were most common among CEOs and MDs in the study?

Across all universities Novuna logged 229 mentions of business administration and management among the CEO and MD group, 157 of general business and commerce, and 73 of marketing. Economics had 68 mentions and organisational leadership 32. Sustainability studies and sports studies appear among the top subjects at the 20 highest-rate universities even though they do not make the overall top ten.

Where did Scotland sit among UK regions on this score?

Scotland’s average CEO and MD share for 2005 to 2024 was 3.60%, sixth among the nine regional groups Novuna published, behind London at 4.35%, the North West at 3.94%, the South East at 3.93%, Wales at 3.84% and the Midlands at 3.65%. On founders, Scotland’s 3.23% average ranked fifth, with London well ahead at 5.34%.

Did an earlier Hitachi study already rank Heriot-Watt in Scotland?

Yes. Novuna’s own recap of its June 2021 Hitachi Capital Invoice Finance analysis put Heriot-Watt 24th in the UK at 9.37%, the highest Scottish share in that table, with St Andrews close behind at 9.34%. LSE led the 2021 list at 15.98%. The 2023 Novuna scrape is the one that briefly put Heriot-Watt first in Britain.