Gladedale to rebuild local brands from ground up

Published on Tuesday 10 November 2009 20:25

PROPERTY giant Gladedale will today announce the resurrection of its former housing brand Bett Homes, following a massive restructuring in September that wiped out its owner's shareholding.

Accounts filed at Companies House reveal the extent of the restructuring of the group, which owns major projects in Scotland including the 450 million Quartermile project in Edinburgh and housebuilding companies across the UK, including an operation headquartered in Stirling.

Accounts for Gladedale Ventures and Gladedale Northern outline a deal with the group's banker, Lloyds Banking Group, in September where the group's covenant breaches were "waived and completely extinguished".

In exchange, founder and former chairman Remo Dipre has walked away from a company worth 600m at its 2007 peak. Dipre, who set up Gladedale in 1992, resigned from the group in April but gave up his shareholding in September.

Lloyds, which took over the group's 900m debt – formerly owned by HBOS and its subsidiary Uberior Ventures – now owns 30 per cent of Gladedale.

The company is managed by Gladedale chief executive David Gaffney, as well as Tim Redburn and Dominic Lavelle.

Turnaround specialist Redburn and his colleague Lavelle were involved in winding down Erinaceous, a property services and insurance conglomerate that collapsed in April 2008 leaving its bankers, led by HBOS, more than 200m out of pocket.

The housebuilding division, currently known as Gladedale (Northern Division), will again be called Bett Homes. Dipre acquired Bett Homes in 2002 from its chairman, Ronnie Hanna, for 95m and changed the name in 2007 to Gladedale.

Gaffney yesterday confirmed that the Bett Homes brand was being restored across Scotland in line with the company's decision to focus its core residential businesses on their respective regional markets.

The company will trade as Ben Bailey Homes in Yorkshire, the Midlands and north of England and as Country & Metropolitan Homes in south-east England. All of these are brand names that were formerly acquired by Gladedale Group.

Gaffney said: "Like all major house-builders, Gladedale's operations were impacted by the economic downturn. We have since come up with very clear strategy to move forwards and refocusing on regional brands for local markets is a key part of that. We have a new funding package in place, a new operating strategy and a leaner structure so we can now begin to plan more positively for less turbulent times."

Gladedale Ventures, which holds the assets of Quartermile, booked an 8.2m loss on the revaluation of the property as turnover slumped from 80m to 38m. Shareholder losses hit 19.9m. As much as 75m as the division's borrowings with Bank of Scotland were written off and Lloyds now lends this division 145m.

Turnover at Gladedale Northern more than halved and profits slumped drastically in 2008. Income fell from 216m to 102m in 2008, while profits slumped from 7.3m to 0.6m.