Souter sells majority stake in First Scottish

Kenny Wastell
28 August 2018

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Souter Investments has sold its majority stake in First Scottish Group, a provider of search services and reports to the residential and commercial property markets, to an unnamed international private investment group.

The transaction ends a nine-year holding period for the vendor and generated a money multiple of more than 4x. It comes two years after the business sold secure document exchange network Legal Post and postal firm First Post to trade buyer DX.

During Souter's tenure, the company expanded its range of products and services.

The business will continue under its existing management team and will also continue to trade under its existing name.

Previous funding
Souter invested in First Scottish in 2009 via a turnaround deal, providing finance to recapitalise the company's balance sheet and fuel its growth strategy.

Company
Founded in 1987 and headquartered in Dalgety Bay, Fife, First Scottish provides searches and reports for solicitors, conveyancers, estate agents, financial institutions and local authorities. Its services include title searches, property searches, environmental searches, mining searches and other services including deed plans, plan reports and searches of community bodies' interests. The business generated a turnover of £10.7m in 2017, according to publicly available documents.

People
Souter Investments – John Berthinussen (investment director).
First Scottish Group – Ian Fraser (managing director).

Advisers
Vendor – KPMG (corporate finance); Addleshaw Goddard (legal); CMS (legal); Lindsays (legal); Thomson Cooper (tax).