The+Scottish+Metropolitan+Property+Company

=The Scottish Metropolitan Property Company Limited=

Company Number: SC001846 Date of Incorporation: 2 April 1889 Contact Details: 15 Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh, EH3 8HA Operating Details: Active (Private Limited Company) Other names (if known): The Scottish Metropolitan Property PLC (up to 2002) Function of Company*: Development & sell real estate (7011), Letting of own property (7020) Headquarters/Base of Operations Location: Glasgow, later Edinburgh Area of Operation: Owns property across the UK with an emphasis on Scotland and the North of England. Owned by a larger multi-national corporation


 * Taken from Standard Industrial Classification 2003, as used by Companies House in 2010

Records
This company has not responded to any enquiries about historic records, and there appears to be no deposit in any known archival institution.

Related records: There are a large number of court cases involving this company in the National Archives of Scotland.

Company History
The company was apparently founded by Isidore Aaron Walton, a Glasgow-based property developer, though it may be that he changed the name of the company from one that was incorporated earlier (records in the NAS date from 1903 under the Scottish Metropolitan Property Company). In 1964 he created the Isidore and David Walton Trust which supported cardiac health research.

The company remained active throughout the twentieth century, at one point being the largest property development company in Scotland. Walton appears to have been central to the development of the company, and appointed directors that he knew and trusted, including Professor Bob Jack. In 1968 the company remodelled the historic Glasgow Stock Exchange, and in 1974 created Metropolitan House in Inverness town centre. Baron Taylor of Gryfe sat on the board between 1972 and 1988, though in this period it appears that the company faded from profitability.

Given that the company was one of the largest Scottish property owners, it may be that it absorbed the Aberdeen Heritable Securities and Investment Company and the Scottish Lands and Buildings Company before its take over by Haslemere Estates.

In the 1990s the company was turned around by Scott Cairns, who managed the company between 1992 and 2000. Scottish Metropolitan Property PLC was subsequently purchased by Haslemere Estates for £152 million in 2000. Haslemere Estates is itself a subsidiary of the Rodamco group, a Europe wide retail property developer, which acquired it in 1986.