Making Dundee the place to be? Giving Glasgow go-to bars, golf courses and spas? If you’re thinking big for your next development, think OakNorth.
We’ve lent over £5bn to expert developers up and down the UK, helping them regenerate neighbourhoods, build new co-working spaces, support life sciences with state-of-the-art labs, and much more.
We’re entrepreneurs at heart, so we build our development financing with business owners front and centre. That means no inflexible and inefficient finance facilities, no-time wasting, and no ambiguity. Just straightforward debt finance without giving up equity.
Not sure which financing you need? From term debt to revolving credit facilities and bridging loans, our financing is bespoke to your use case. Find out more about the different types of debt we offer in Scotland in our guide to business loans.
Breathing life into a disused quarry at Ratho, near Edinburgh, Wavegarden Scotland secured funding from the Scottish National Investment Bank, and OakNorth to create a new leisure centre. The project will transform 23 hectares of derelict land into a world-class sporting facility. The aim is to promote sustainable tourism while protecting and restoring the natural environment’s biodiversity and community.
Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are thriving in Scotland, with Glasgow leading the way with spinups, startups and scaleups. So, we weren’t surprised when Bruntwood SciTech approached OakNorth with an exciting opportunity to acquire and redevelop Glasgow’s Met Tower into the city’s central hub for research and development. We partnered with CEO Kate Lawlor, providing £35.6m for the transformation.
Voted ‘Best Hotel in Scotland’ by The Times in 2020, House of Gods founders Mike and Ross Baxter wanted to bring their immersive experiences and unapologetic opulence to even more people. We provided them £4.8m in specialist property development finance to build two new 4-star hotels in Glasgow and Manchester.
Having a financing partner that understands your industry is non-negotiable. Having a local advisor that calls your local region home – now that’s priceless.
We’ve opened offices in Scotland to help serve UK entrepreneurs better. So, no London-centric lending, just real-life experts, where you are – and where they’re needed.
Meet Kate, CEO of Bruntwood SciTech
We provided the debt finance Bruntwood SciTech needed to continue supporting the UK science industry. Hear Kate’s experience below.
Bruntwood SciTech is focused on commercial property in the science and technology sectors – we just provided the environment for those businesses to come in, work together, collaborate, and support them through their growth journey.
I’m a finance person by trade. I’d always had a bit of a desire to go work in industry and a role at Bruntwood came up. So, I joined the group just over 10 years ago now and have worked in various different roles over the years, and then was asked to take on the Chief Executive role just over 18 months ago, so I’ve moved on to something a bit more expansive than just the numbers.
We were looking to begin to grow our footprint in Birmingham initially. We had one opportunity on the table at the time, which was the development of a new building. We designed the building up, had a cost plan, and needed some debt funding to support us in getting that off the ground and built, and then the pandemic hit. It took us a while to kind of regroup and get our heads around that. But I think ultimately, we still believed in the fact that this was the sector that was really going to begin to power the growth of the UK coming out of the pandemic.
Having gone back to a couple of other funders at the time, pre-pandemic who were interested, they had withdrawn from that market, but OakNorth was still keen to support us through that journey and could spot the fact that actually, this business was in quite a sweet spot sectorally as far as real estate was concerned. And so were keen to continue to fund the building, which was brilliant. OakNorth just has a slightly different slant in the way that they do business, and it is a lot quicker. The ability for me to pick up the phone to an individual that I know and understand us as a business is absolutely key. OakNorth is one of those lenders that will look at things that are a little bit out of the box that others won’t.
Going to credit committee I thought was really beneficial. They are hearing our background, our story, our expertise, our financial position from us as a team, rather than things being lost in translation. I think it just made the whole process far quicker, far slicker, to tell me what they need to achieve. I tell them what I need to achieve, and we get there.
We’re proud to work with some of the most esteemed and experienced names in real estate. From operationally net-zero housing to buzzing bars and hotels, to wave gardens and retail centres, whatever Scotland needs next, we’re here to back it. You should consider OakNorth if:
Get in touch today, and we’ll connect you with a real estate expert in Scotland.