Scottish Widows and Bank of Scotland finance Aberdeen offices

Insurance firm Scottish Widows, through its partnership with Lloyds Bank’s Bank of Scotland, has provided a £54 million loan to a Scottish property firm to finance an office scheme in Aberdeen.

The ten-year loan was provided to HFD Property Group by Bank of Scotland’s commercial real estate team, through the partnership with Scottish Widows, which is also part of Lloyds Banking Group. The loan refinances the recently-completed 216,000 square foot office scheme, Sir Ian Wood House.

The building has been let to energy industry support services provider Wood Group on a 15-year lease. It was originally called CityPark1 before being renamed after the tenant’s long-serving former chairman.

The building, located in Aberdeen’s new 15-acre CityPark business park in Altens, was completed earlier this year.

HFD’s new funding agreement replaces an existing development financing facility on the scheme which was provided by another bank.

“This new longer term funding agreement provides us, while we remain owner, with certainty of funding over an extended period for this landmark new development within the HFD Portfolio,” said Stephen Lewis, managing director at HFD Property Group.

“HFD are a long-standing client whose growth we have supported across Scotland for a number of years. For Sir Ian Wood House, they were looking for a facility secured on attractive long term rates and so we were able to leverage our partnership with Scottish Widows to deliver this,” added Alan Brennan, relationship director, commercial real estate, at Bank of Scotland.

Earlier this year, Bank of Scotland provided a development funding facility to HFD Property Group for the 360,000 square foot Bothwell Exchange in Glasgow, which is partially pre-let to investment bank Morgan Stanley.

As part of the partnership between Bank of Scotland Commercial Real Estate and Scottish Widows, which was launched in 2014, the bank originates loans of seven years and more on behalf of the insurance subsidiary.