TWO major Scottish companies have signed up for more than half of the space at the Haymarket One office building in Edinburgh.

M&G Real Estate and property development partner Qmile Group said yesterday they had agreed pre-lets for 55 per cent of Haymarket One. This office building is part of the broader, £350 million Haymarket Edinburgh development.

Agreements for 62,183 sq ft of Grade A office space at the 1 Haymarket Square building have been signed by oil and gas independent Cairn Energy and Scottish law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn, which will take 32,722 sq ft and 29,461 sq ft respectively.

The latest deals follow the pre-letting of 280,000 sq ft of space in Haymarket Three in July last year on a 20-year lease to fund management heavyweight Baillie Gifford, for its new head office.

Planned by architect Foster + Partners, the Haymarket development is billed as offering a wide range of “health and wellbeing amenities”, including smart building technology, extensive cycle storage and electric-vehicle charging points.

A hotel, and shops and leisure facilities will be configured around a landscaped public realm.

Aaron Pope, director of asset management at M&G Real Estate, said: “As major investors and employers in Edinburgh ourselves, M&G saw an opportunity to regenerate this derelict part of the city, which culminated in the purchase of the site in 2018 on behalf of Prudential’s five million policy holders. We can finance significant projects and use our asset management experience to deliver ambitious, high-quality projects, which improve communities."

Paul Curran, chief executive of Edinburgh-based Qmile Group, said: “These latest pre-lets...show the continued confidence in Edinburgh’s commercial property market.”

Shepherd and Wedderburn, which currently has an office at Exchange Crescent in Conference Square, said it had chosen Haymarket Edinburgh because of its "modern facilities, prime city-centre location and the ease of access it offers colleagues and clients using public transport".