Mactaggart in profit after £3.4m revival

Deputy Business Editor, Sunday Herald

Tuesday 11 September 2012

THE property investment vehicle owned by the family of Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart has swung back into profit after three years in the red.

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Steven Vass

Mactaggart Heritable Holdings (MHH), which closed its 113-year-old Glasgow base when it swapped its Bath Street headquarters for central London in 2010, rents out top-end commercial properties mostly in the UK capital and Manhattan and operates several English hotels.

Having recorded pre-tax losses of £6.4 million in 2008, £628,000 in 2009 and £496,000 in 2010, the company achieved a £3.4m revival in the year ended December 31, 2011. Mactaggart, which trades as Western Heritable Investment Company, benefited from an increase in rental and hotel income of around £300,000. This included better-than-expected figures from its base2stay brand of luxury hotels in Liverpool and Kensington, to which will be added a third in London's Soho next year. Total sales rose 4% to £10.7m. More important bottom-line drivers were a £202,000 profit on fixed asset investments compared to a £1.2m loss last year; and a one-off payment of £2m for a "right to light" – an old entitlement in English law that property owners receive once they have enjoyed light through a window for 20 years. Debts rose almost £10m to £53.9m, while those due within the year rose 23% to £14.6m. Mactaggart is chaired by Sir John Mactaggart, older brother of Fiona, and most likely the director whose salary increased during the year from £250,000 to £314,000. The company also paid out a dividend of £2m during the year, a rise on 2010's £1.3m. The company dates back to Sir John and Fiona's grandfather John, who began building tenements in Springburn in the 1890s. Construction diverted into Mactaggart and Mickel in 1925 when it was set up by Sir John's son Jack and Andrew Mickel, leaving Western Heritable to concentrate on rentals. According to the most recent Sunday Times Rich List, the family is the 53rd wealthiest in Scotland with a worth of £97m. Fiona Mactaggart, MP for Slough, was elected as one of the original 'Blair babes' on the all-female selection lists of 1997. She served as a parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Home Office from 2003 to 2006. The company is thought to still own a small number of residential properties in Glasgow, but said when it left the city in 2010 that it did not have enough estate management and factoring work to justify the office.

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Mactaggart in profit after £3.4m revival

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