Our Client

A ‘Developer of the Year’, Scottish Pension Fund and building company’s property development project for 390 houses and retail shopping centre in Rosyth, Scotland.

The Project

Their complex project required initial funding of £2.4 million to buy out minority stakeholders and £1.75 million funding to build a shopping centre. Overtime, a further £2.7 million was needed to build 90 social housing units and the remaining 300 properties. Our Client, previously acclaimed as Developer of the Year in Scotland, sold his business four years earlier to Gladedale. As part of that sale, he had signed an agreement not to build any properties for four years. Biding his time on his other business interests he set about securing planning for 390 units and a retail park on land in Rosyth, once the four years had expired he was ready to start construction on the site. During this time RQ Capital were approached to help with the funding.

RQ Capital agreed to lend £2.4 million directly to the pension fund, secured by a 1st charge over the land with planning for 390 units. The development was multi phased with the pension funding selling land piece by piece to the borrower’s building company at market value, thereby reducing the £2.4 million loan overtime. RQ then lent the building company over £5 million over the subsequent four years to assist in building out different phases of the development.

Based in Scotland the project required RQ Capital to incorporate Scottish law and adhere to its pension regulations when preparing the funding documentation – Brodies Solicitors successfully acted for RQ on this, throughout the process.

One of the challenges faced was obtaining the pension Trustees approval at a time when the pension industry was consolidating, and the client’s pension passed over to new Trustees. It was imperative that the pension fund was not seen as developing any land, or it would have lost its taxable advantages and cost the client millions in additional taxes. Hence, the building company had to buy each parcel of land at market value before building on that land.

The borrower had also entered a joint venture with the Scottish government to build and own the social housing units. This meant that as each phase completed the Government would repay RQ all its development funding. Given that the Scottish referendum was happening in the middle of this there was the potential risk that the SNP would not honour the original agreement.

 By lending to both the pension fund and the building company and understanding the corporate sensitivities of the regulatory requirements, we were able to ensure that all funds were drawn down in a timely basis despite the meticulous red tape required.

Our Client was delighted and kindly provided us with the following testimonial:

“We have enjoyed working with RQ over a number of years, when other development funding avenues were difficult. We found the team to be understanding of our requirements right from the outset and have enjoyed working with them over a number of phases on this project. They grasped the complexities of the pension fund vehicle and the separate development company and were able to put funding packages together for both entities, when other lenders saw this as an obstacle. We would have no hesitation in working with them again or in recommending their services”.

Keith P