Bank of Scotland buys 40% stake in housing developer

The residential developer was established in Inverness in 1925 and builds homes across the UK, ranging in price from £130,000 to £500,000 and employs 300 people, predominantly in Scotland.

Following the deal chairman and chief executive David Sutherland will remain Tulloch's largest shareholder with a 43% shareholding.

Tulloch Homes Group has three house building divisions called Tulloch Homes, Argyll Homes and Tulloch Homes Express which focuses on the social housing market. In its results last years results the group reported a turnover of £153.5m and a pre-tax profit of £33.6m up from £11.2m the year before. The significant rise in pre-tax profits was due to the disposal of the construction, services and insulation businesses in 2006.

Tulloch Construction – Tulloch's construction and civil engineering business – was sold to Rok in 2006 and was recently rebranded as Rok Construction. Tulloch Homes Group is the largest private shareholder in Rok.

The company has a large land bank in the north of Scotland and says it is confident that the Scottish housing market is still strong ‘having outperformed the UK market over the past four years and with Halifax forecasting 2008 House Price Inflation at 4%’.

Sutherland said: ‘This is an excellent move for Tulloch Homes Group and I am delighted that our bankers of more than 20 years have decided to invest in our future. We currently have a significant land bank at current volumes of five years across Scotland and this investment by Bank of Scotland will give us the opportunity to grow our business even further.’

Gordon More, head of joint ventures transactions at Bank of Scotland Corporate, said: ‘The deal also fits perfectly with our ambition to invest in the North of Scotland housing market, which we see as having strong growth potential over the coming years. We're looking forward to working alongside David and his team as they attempt to step up their business to the next level.'