MIKE WELCH, the entrepreneur who built up the Blackcircles.com tyre business before offloading it to Michelin for £50 million in 2015, has launched a new property investment fund.
The fund has been set up by Full Circle Partners, the investment vehicle established by Mr Welch, corporate lawyer Paul Jarman-Williams and public relations specialist Nick Freer this year. Its portfolio includes investments in Atterley.com, the online fashion start-up.
FCP Property Development Fund expects to invest around £20m over the next 12 to 18 months to provide short-term liquidity and investment support to established commercial and residential property developers, with loans ranging in value from £250,000 to £2.5m. Around £6m has already been invested by the fund.
Matthew Edgar, a long-time adviser to Mr Welch and property sector veteran, will run the fund.
Mr Welch said: “The FCP property fund formalises the activity Matthew and I have been engaged on for the last year or so.
“Matthew is massively respected in the sector and what the last year has shown us, by applying tried and tested private equity principals to allow property businesses to improve their liquidity through the property development process, is that there is a big gap in the market for this kind of offering.”
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 here