Brian Wallace, the 53-year-old Ladbrokes finance director, is an unusual man on several fronts. He is a Scottish accountant with a sense of humour and a St Andrews University graduate who is hopeless at golf.

Not that Mr Wallace is devoid of sporting ability. He may not have been all that clever with a mashie niblick in his hands during his four years studying economics at St Andrews, but he was a good enough table tennis player to represent Scottish Universities.

He is also good with numbers, which has come in handy since the former Hilton Group finance director returned to take over from Rosemary Thorne at Ladbrokes – once part of Hilton – on a salary of £480,000.

His early career took in various jobs. After qualifying as an accountant with Price Waterhouse, now PricewaterhouseCoopers, he joined Schlumberger, the US oilfield technology group, and spent seven years in Dubai and Paris.

His first group finance director role was at Geest, the food group, where one of his first tasks was to visit a newly acquired banana plantation in Costa Rica. It was so remote he expected to travel there by helicopter, only to be handed the reins of a horse. “They fully expected me to ride it,” he recalled. “And I did – all through the rainforest. I’d not been on a horse in my life and I’ve not been on one again.”

These days, Mr Wallace, who is also a nonexecutive director of Scottish & Newcastle, is content to make a living taking bets on them.