Danny O’Neill admits that leaving Standard Life 12 years ago to set up his own property investment company was more than scary. “If I had known then what I know now I wouldn’t have done it,” he says.

But that is no reflection on the success of Ediston, which came through the crash unborrowed and unscathed, and whose activities now include the Clydebuilt fund in Glasgow, a housebuilding company, and the ambitious market-listed Ediston investment trust.

The company’s impressive but (Mr O’Neill confides) surprisingly economical offices on the capital’s George Street are just along the road from the HQ of the company where he spent 12 years, ending up running the UK’s biggest pooled property pension fund for Standard Life Investments. “I had one of the best fund management jobs in the UK,” he says.

“I stumbled into the institutional fund management side of real estate, I work extremely long hours much to the disappointment of my wife and kids but I do it because I love it.

“We have had a great 10 years, despite the world’s worst-ever financial collapse we navigated our way through because we didn’t borrow any money from the banks.”

It could have been so different. “Bank of Scotland offered to buy 50per cent of my business for £1 in 2005,” the founder recalls. “I was told it would never succeed, and they would grow it in a way I never could, with £200m to invest immediately. At that time seven out of every eight bids for property assets were being funded by RBS and BoS, and offices of the same bank were bidding against each other.”

The entrepreneur says: “I didn’t know what was round the corner, I said no and we grew our business ourselves, and we are still here healthily growing a Scottish business.”

The crash saw a raft of established Scottish property companies and housebuilders go to the wall as the banks called in their mad deluge of cash. But for Ediston it spelled opportunities.

It had launched a £400m Opportunity Fund unit trust in May 2007, raising £250m from investors, and targeting £1bn under management for the firm within three years. It also agreed a £150m facility with RBS.

“I didn’t think it was the right time to invest. We were sitting on a lot of cash, and our investors were delighted. We had borrowed from the bank on a seven-year loan fixed at 0.9 per cent above base rate, but hadn’t used any of the facility. When we did start, in 2009-10, our cost of finance was 1.4 per cent.”

Mr O’Neill goes on: “To give RBS credit they did exactly what they said they would, even though it was killing them, and when we asked for the money they gave it to us.”

This is his first interview in nine years. “I guard our reputation jealously, we are very professional, open and honest, everyone will say that but in real estate it’s critical, we are working with some of the biggest funds in the market and the biggest investors. We have been raising money every year for the past five or six years, we have got about £700m of real estate assets under management, and we are spending about £150m on development this year UK-wide.”

The tightly-run business offers investors an intensive focus on adding value to its buildings, running only 34 projects with its 12-strong team in Edinburgh.

Ediston was Scottish property company of the year in 2014. Its projects include the Citizen M hotel and Broadway One office building in Glasgow, occupied by Tesco Bank, a £6.5m office building at Morrison Street in Edinburgh, and the regeneration of Heathfield retail park in Ayr – a trick it is hoping to repeat with a tired shopping centre in Coatbridge, and another one picked up recently at Shawlands.

Last year its Clydebuilt initiative for Strathclyde Pension Fund invested £9.5m in the Merchant Square bar and restaurant complex and other properties on Candleriggs, and began work on the Port Glasgow Retail Park - creating hundreds of new jobs and adding millions of pounds to the local economy with most of the space already let.

Glaswegian Mr O’Neill says as a rule he does not like one-client funds but this is an exception. “It’s where I grew up and we have a great relationship with the team at Strathclyde. I think it’s great they are putting some of their pension fund into real estate but saying we will do it in our own backyard – for good performance, yes, but also trying create some regeneration.”

Ediston also invests UK-wide for Europa Capital, and recently received a planning consent in the heritage city of Bath for a major development of an international college and speculative offices.

The investment trust launched in November 2014. “We branded it with our own name, for people to realise we are focused on performance,” Mr O’Neill says.

Last month it unveiled maiden results showing asset value up 8.6per cent in its first year, a pre-tax profit of £12.9m, and a dividend yield target of 5.5per cent on track. He says that excluding acquisition costs the return on a like-for-like basis was 21 per cent, but warns: “We are moving into a different market phase now, where returns will slow a bit....

The boutique’s latest project is Ediston Homes, its own housebuilding company. Mr O’Neill explains: “I have brought in some very experienced people to run it. We are building a team to fill the gap left behind by a lot of housebuilders disappearing after the collapse of the banks, Scotland was hit more than elsewhere because the banks followed local independent housebuilders. The tragedy is that now the big plcs are dominant - they were too big to be allowed to fail.” He says that with a head of steam Ediston can build 400 to 500 houses a year in the central belt of Scotland.