Scottish shopping centre sale key to investment nearing £2bn

Scotland’s commercial property scene has been sharply in focus in the opening weeks of 2026, and the news on this key sector has generally been solid.

The sale of Braehead Shopping Centre played a key part in driving investment in Scottish commercial property to nearly £2 billion last year, a key report revealed in January.

Commercial property consultancy Knight Frank declared that commercial property investment had proved “highly resilient” during what it described as “12 months of uncertainty”, as it highlighted general strength in the retail segment.

Knight Frank’s analysis of Real Capital Analytics’ data found investment volumes reached £1.96 billion in the final stages of the year, “with several more deals close to completion”.

The consultancy observed this was “almost exactly in line with the £1.97 billion average for the previous five years”.

It highlighted Frasers Group’s purchase of Braehead Shopping Centre as one of the big deals of last year.

Analysing the sectoral breakdown of commercial property investment in 2025, Knight Frank said: “Retail was the top-performing sector, attracting £717 million of investment. Deals included the sale of Braehead Shopping Centre for a reported £220 million, along with retail parks such as Rose Street Retail Park in Inverness, Dundee’s Gallagher Retail Park, and Waterfront Retail Park in Greenock.”

Alasdair Steele, head of Scotland commercial at Knight Frank, said: “There have been a lot of challenges in the past 12 months, but Scotland’s commercial property market has shown its resilience once again. While we have just about hit the £2 billion mark, there are several deals that were close to concluding that will now fall into 2026, after a flurry of activity in November and December.”

It will certainly be interesting to see how this year shapes up.

Among other stories I covered on the commercial property front in January was the planned redevelopment of the site of a former bank branch and office in Inverness.

Highland property investment and development company Ark Estates set out its plans to demolish this building and open up the site for redevelopment after acquiring the former Royal Bank of Scotland branch and office at 29-31 Harbour Road in Inverness.

Ark Estates, which said the purchase expanded its “substantial Inverness commercial property portfolio”, declared: “The prominent two-storey, 10,035 sq ft retail/office building is set within a 0.572-acre site and was, until recently, the Highland headquarters of RBS.

“The flat-roof building is set to be demolished to open the site up for redevelopment.”

Elsewhere in the last month, Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust saw off a second attempt by US hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein’s Saba Capital Management to oust its entire board, in a crunch vote.

The trust, run by Edinburgh-based Baillie Gifford, revealed on January 20 that investors holding 53.2% of the shares voted opposed the resolutions put to a general meeting requisitioned by Saba, which had attempted to replace the trust’s board with three US-based individuals it had chosen.

Excluding shares held by Saba, shareholders representing 92.7% of the shares voted rejected the Saba proposals put to the January 20 meeting.

Saba had built its stake in Edinburgh Worldwide to “just over” 30% ahead of the vote, the investment trust’s chairman, Jonathan Simpson-Dent, noted last month, up from “slightly under” 25% when the US hedge fund's previous attempt to oust the board was defeated in February last year.

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Edinburgh Worldwide, which had total assets of around £831.55m at November 30 with Elon Musk's SpaceX as the single largest investment in its portfolio, highlighted an impressive investment performance against its benchmark over the past year in the run-up to the latest vote.

One of my columns in The Herald last month on these key events observed: “Saba continues to cast a very long and broad shadow over the UK investment trust sector. And, while it was defeated in its latest bid to oust the board of Edinburgh Worldwide, Saba retains a very large stake in this trust.

“The investment trust sector has over the decades been no stranger to arbitrageurs and activists. However, such action, while involving some of the biggest investment trusts and producing major drama on occasion, had tended to be much more sporadic before Saba moved to make its presence in the sector felt in a more spectacular way a little more than a year ago.

“And the means of resolution of such past aggressive behaviour by activists were relatively predictable in most, though not all, cases. Looking at the landscape right now, it is far from clear how things will shape up from here.

“One thing that does seem plain, in a general sense, is that Mr Weinstein and Saba will not be disappearing back over the horizon just because of another high-profile defeat.”

The column observed that Saba early last year lost all of its attempts to oust the boards of seven UK investment trusts.

It concluded: “The degree of disparity between the interests of long-term shareholders and arbitrageurs in the investment trust sector varies according to the particular situation.

“However, the two Edinburgh Worldwide votes, and the raft of defeats for Saba early last year, signal that the wishes of long-term shareholders in these instances are very far away from those of the US hedge fund.”

Scotland’s airports have also once again been in the headlines in the latest month.

Another of my columns in The Herald in January observed: “We might not be far into 2026 but already Scotland’s two biggest airports have had wins to celebrate.

“This follows a busy 2025 for Edinburgh and Glasgow airports on new flight successes.”

It went on: “Glasgow Airport, which has been somewhat in the shadow of Edinburgh Airport since around the turn of the millennium in terms of passenger traffic momentum, for its part enjoyed a strong second half of 2025 under its new ownership.

“It will be fascinating to see how things unfold for both airports this year.”

The column observed: “On January 8, during the first full week following the New Year public holidays, Edinburgh Airport announced that American Airlines was extending its service between the Scottish capital and Philadelphia into the winter this year, after a ‘highly successful’ return in 2025.

“Glasgow Airport was able on January 13 to unveil a new route, following a flurry of wins in late 2025. It announced a ‘brand-new route’ to Zurich, operated by Swiss leisure airline Edelweiss. The Swiss airline, the airport observed, is a member of Germany’s Lufthansa Group, already a major operator of flights from and to Glasgow.”

It has certainly been a lively start to the year on the Scottish business and economic scene.

This article was first published in The Herald's Business HQ Monthly supplement