Is he now, unassailably, the greatest banker in the world? Or has he just finalised the deal which will finish him? Sir Fred Goodwin, the head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was bullish yesterday as his bid for the Dutch company ABN Amro, the world’s biggest banking takeover, was made unconditional.

The deal is being questioned by the City, which perceives Sir Fred as an egomaniac. But the quiet Scot, almost perversely unshowy, might be equally ready to condemn them as the “cynics, spectators and dead wood” he once said he had no time for.

Behind the audacious deals is a man so robust in his self-belief that he appears to have honed his business life to a minimalist art form.

Sir Fred chairs a “deep and brief” morning discussion in which he and his inner coterie of senior colleagues share a videolinked conference at which everyone knows exactly what needs to be done, and who is to do it. The communication is short, focused and of the highest quality.

When the news came that the Royal Bank, in consortium with Santander and Fortis, had won control of ABN Amro from under the nose of Barclays, it is unlikely the chief buccaneer of world banking wasted time back-slapping. More likely he was deciding, perhaps, whether the axe should fall on a rumoured 19,000 jobs? Such is the Goodwin style.

To the City, Sir Fred is an enigma, perhaps because of the quintessentially Scottish way he runs the Royal Bank, or RBS, as it prefers to brand itself. He retains something of the dominie, the traditional school master; a sense of discipline, no waste, few holidays, no dancing on the heads of pins.

Not known for his patience, he is said to have a five-second rule which holds that first instincts are best.

Away from RBS’s corporate gambles is the matter of its dominance in personal banking. RBS under Sir Fred had the nous to see that customers were fed up talking to computers, and in one fell swoop, by restoring the chance to “talk to your own branch” as a marketing tool, and offering people £100 to switch accounts, it soared away from competitors.

There is something faintly avuncular, also, in the pride he takes in the facilities for staff at the plush new Gogarburn offices, the RBS village on the Western outskirts of Edinburgh.

Born in 1958 into a close, hard-working family in Ferguslie Park, a council estate in Paisley, the young Fred went to Paisley Grammar school and then to Glasgow University to study law.

After a law degree, he switched to accountancy, becoming a partner with Touche Ross at 29. There, by chance — he has said that he never planned his career — came a second switch, largely due to his competence with detail and appetite for unpopular work.

When he helped National Australia Bank to buy Clydesdale Bank, Sir Fred’s acumen and hunger for hard work so impressed his masters that he was asked to head the Scottish bank.

Others saw it too. Swiftly, he was poached by Sir George Mathewson to lead RBS, and the impact was astonishing. In 2000, after a £21 billion hostile bid battle, it acquired Natwest, which was three times its size. The move is still regarded as one of the best banking deals ever done, but 18,000 staff lost their jobs.

In private, he is said to be easy-going, modest and unassuming. His pay package last year was £3.99m, but his fierce sense of privacy ensures that we will know little of how he spends it.

Right said Fred

Born Paisley, August 1958

Education Paisley Grammar School and University of Glasgow

First job Touche Ross

Career 1995-98 Clydesdale Bank, deputy chief executive; 1998-2000 RBS, deputy chief executive; 2000- RBS chief executive

Family Married, two sons

Interests Restoring old cars, golf, chairman of The Prince’s Trust

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