HIGH-END housebuilder Cala is being lined up for flotation within the next four years, almost 150 years since it became the first Scottish company to be listed on the London stock market.

The Edinburgh-based company was last month acquired by investors led by private equity firm Patron Capital and pensions and investment giant Legal & General in a £210 million deal.
This was the latest stage in what has been a long and at times tumultuous history for the company, which was first incorporated in 1875 as a land management and feu collection company called the City of Aberdeen Land Association.
It has been privately owned since 1999 and Bank of Scotland took control of it during the recent housing crash.
Keith Breslauer, managing director of Patron, said: “Cala Homes will come to market in four to five years.”
Patron, which specialises in property-related deals, secured a 46.5% stake in Cala in last month’s deal which is intended to provide the housebuilder with greater access to funding to spur its growth.
Mr Breslauer said: “Cala Homes’s current challenge is it was owned by a bank and management were not free to go and do their own thing.”
He praised the strength of the company’s leadership team, overseen by chief executive Alan Brown, which acquired a 7% holding in the business following the deal.
“Cala Homes has an incredibly talented management team,” Mr Breslauer said.
He also highlighted the cashflow generated by the business and the prospects for growth offered by a slew of projects including a 2000-home development in Winchester, Hampshire, which could see it benefit from the buoyant southern housing market.
Currently, it is particularly strong in Scotland and the English Midlands, although its positioning at the luxury end of the market means its average selling price of £340,000 outstrips its main rivals, despite its lack of exposure to the booming south-east.
The plan for Cala comes after fellow housebuilder Crest Nicolson returned to the stock market in February with a £553m valuation.
Crest Nicolson was another company that ended up in the hands of Bank of Scotland after it was taken private by Ayrshire entrepreneur Sir Tom Hunter and the bank at the height of the credit boom in 2007.
Mr Breslauer said Patron often continues holding a stake in an investee company even after it takes a stock market listing.
He insisted its investment in Cala is driven by the prospects for its growth and not the sort of asset-stripping private equity firms are often accused of.
“There is no value in Cala Homes in the land bank: it is about getting it to grow and probably taking it public in four years,” he said.
Cala began building homes in 1974 with a scheme in Aberdeen. It moved into Edinburgh in the late 1970s and into Glasgow and across the Border in subsequent decades.
In 1999, the senior management led by Geoff Ball acquired the company.
However, having racked up borrowings as a customer of Peter Cummings’s corporate banking division at Bank of Scotland, Cala surrendered control to the bank in a £280m debt-for-equity swap in late 2009 and a follow-up deal last year.
Cala currently employs 284 people in Scotland at its head office and in its regional teams, while hundreds of contractors work at its sites across the country.
Lloyds Banking Group, Bank of Scotland’s owner since 2009, remains Cala’s banker.