Merger creates Edinburgh’s largest letting agency

EDINBURGH’S biggest letting agency will be created this month when three of the capital’s long-established property management firms are brought together into a single operation.

Malcolm Cannon, chief executive of Braemore Property. Picture: Neil Hanna

The deal will see the James Gibb and Alba Residential names subsumed by Braemore Property Management, creating a single agency with more than 3,000 properties.

The combined business, owned by Lomond Capital, will formally launch on 16 April with the debut of a unified website.

James Gibb has managed property in Edinburgh since 1872, while Alba has been in business for more than a decade. They were acquired in 2012 and 2013 respectively by Lomond, the residential letting specialist backed by City grandee Roger Lane-Smith.

Braemore was Lomond’s first acquisition. It has operated in the Edinburgh lettings sector for more than two decades, and had more than 800 properties on its books when it was taken over in 2010.

The amalgamation comes just eight months after the appointment of Malcolm Cannon to the newly created role of chief executive at what was previously called Lomond Edinburgh, now Braemore.

“Combining the operation allows us to leverage the size and scale of the organisation as much as possible,” Cannon said. “Having three separate businesses was also adding complexity to an already complex business.”

Lomond was set up by Lane-Smith and chief executive Stuart Pender with a £45 million war chest to fund acquisitions and drive consolidation in the fragmented sector for residential lettings. It now manages more than £1.5 billion of property investments.