Receivers appointed at Dunedin’s £521m industrial business

Roun Barry, head of the Edinburgh-based property company, said today that Ernst & Young partners Alan Bloom, Alan Hudson and Colin Dempster had been appointed as receivers of Dunedin Property Capital Fund Limited and Dunedin Property Industrial Fund (Holdings) Limited , which are the holding companies of the group which owns the Industrious portfolio.

‘These companies do not own the property assets of the group nor do they take part in the day-to-day property management and trading activities of the group,’ the receivers said.

‘All other companies within the group are unaffected by the appointment and continue to operate as normal under the control of their existing management and directors.’

Property Week revealed on the front page of last Friday’s issue that Industrious was facing collapse.

Industrious manages 120 estates in the UK, providing 10m sq ft of space for industrial, warehouse and office use.

Yesterday it emerged that Dunedin Property Industrial Fund, which owns the Industrious portfolio, had failed to secure the short-term working capital that it was ‘urgently’ seeking in order to survive.

A notice issued to holders of the commercial mortgage-backed securities issued by Royal Bank of Scotland, which securitised the senior part of the debt used to buy the Industrious properties in October 2006, said the fund ‘cannot access the funds within the existing lending structure and does not have access to an additional credit facility’.

The amount outstanding on the bonds is £472.7m, while RBS and the junior lenders are owed £585m of debt – at least £60m more than the value of the portfolio, which fell from £631m in September 2007 to £521m at 30 June.

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