EDINBURGH-based Alligator Storage Centres has appointed HSBC as its main banking partner, having agreed a £15.5 million, five-year debt facility to support future growth.
HSBC said the facility was one of the largest transaction values arranged by its commercial banking division in Scotland to date. Alligator Storage Centres previously had Bank of America Merrill Lynch as its main banker.
The company is run by chief executive Alister Jack, who has built up and sold other self-storage businesses.
Mr Jack told The Herald that he was, at HSBC, dealing with a "bank manager we had used in the past" at one of these other self-storage businesses, Armadillo.
He added that Stephen Leckie, who was appointed as a senior commercial manager by HSBC earlier this year, had been at Bank of Scotland at the time he was involved in providing debt to Armadillo.
HSBC cited the Alligator management's strong track record in self-storage. Mr Jack not only created Armadillo, sold in 2007 for £40m, but also built Aardvark, which was sold in 2002 for £30m.
The bank said: "With a strong track record in developing profitable self-storage businesses including Aardvark and Armadillo, sold for £30m and £40m respectively, the same management team founded Alligator Self Storage in 2007 and organically developed a portfolio of four centres."
It noted that, in 2010, Mr Jack acquired a new portfolio "to create what is now known as Alligator Storage Centres".
Alligator employs 58 people and manages 15 UK locations, providing households and businesses with storage.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article