THE MONARCH OF THE GLEN
Within little more than a decade, Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen has snapped up a dozen estates to become the biggest private landowner in Scotland. But who is he and exactly what does he want? asks Alex Massie
Who is Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, Scotland's biggest private landowner?
Last year, Ashley Tabor, the owner of Capital FM radio station, bought a penthouse flat in Knightsbridge for £90m. Even by London’s elevated standards, this was an eye-popping transaction, the most expensive residential purchase ever recorded by the Land Registry. Tabor plans to combine his new property with one he already owns next door, creating a 15,000 square foot ‘super-flat’.
In Scotland, by contrast, the Danish fashion magnate Anders Holch Povlsen has, over the past decade or so, spent approximately £70m buying a dozen Highland estates across the Cairngorms, Lochaber and Sutherland, which have made him Scotland’s largest private landowner. Value is a subjective matter but it is difficult to see how, in comparison with the inflated costs of high-end London property, Povlsen has not enjoyed the better ‘bargain’.
In one of his very few public utterances, Povlsen stated the obvious: ‘My family and I are very fond of Scotland. It is a lovely place with wonderful nature and nice people.’ So lovely, indeed, that he now owns close to one percent of the Scottish landmass.
The 46-year-old’s lands are now spread over 220,000 acres, almost
exactly the same area as the Duke of Buccleuch’s holdings, which are largely in Dumfriesshire and the Borders.
Since the Buccleuch estate has embarked on a programme of selling a number of farms as part of a long-term plan to reduce its acreage, Povlsen’s place at the top of the landowning league table seems all but assured.
But whereas the Scott family’s holdings were built up over centuries, Povlsen’s huge acreage has been acquired in little more than a decade. Nor does there seem any prospect of his spending spree stopping any time soon: he was in talks to buy a huge 100,000 acre estate outside Fort William owned by British Aluminium until the Liberty Group stepped in, and is routinely linked with any estates that come onto the market.
Despite this, surprisingly little is known about the Dane. Nor has his spate of acquisitions prompted much in the way of parliamentary interest. Indeed, a search of the Scottish Parliament’s official report reveals that Povlsen has only once been referred to by name in the Holyrood chamber.
Like many prominent Scandinavians who own estates in Scotland – such as Swedish Tetrapack sisters Sigrid and Lisbet Rausing, and Danish Lego heir Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen – Povlsen keeps a determinedly low profile. This is in keeping with the Danish ethos of ‘Jantelov’, which translates as ‘Don’t think you are special’ and emphasises the collective rather than the individual.
Povlsen has a penchant for fast cars and private planes, lives with his wife Anne and their three daughters in the former Danish royal palace of Constantinsborg, and counts the Danish royal family among his friends. Yet he is, associates insist, a ‘normal’ fellow, indistinguishable in appearance and demeanour from countless other Scandinavians who holiday in Scotland (he is also, and this is crucial, rarely recognised in Scotland).
Like other Nordic visitors he loves a dram, but while many Scandinavian visitors come for the shooting and fishing, Povlsen prefers to think of himself as an environmental champion, restoring lost habitats and investing for the long-term future of his estates. There is something 19th century about his vision, not just in terms of acreage but in the romantic conception of the landscape as a place for spiritual and personal restoration. Scotland, in this vision, is an escape but not quite a playground.
It takes money to afford this kind of worldview on this kind of scale, but then Povlsen lacks for little on that front. Forbes magazine estimates his fortune, based on the Bestseller clothing group, to be worth nearly $4bn.
Povlsen’s father Troels, from whom he took over the family fashion business in 2001, began his entrepreneurial life selling carpets in the Danish city of Aarhus. He started a clothes shop in 1974 and founded Bestseller a year later; the group now operates more than 20 fashion brands. The Povlsens were early entrants into the Chinese market, establishing a joint venture in 1996 that now operates more than 6,000 shops in China. Povlsen has a 25% stake in Asos, the UK’s leading online fashion retailer, and a significant stake in Germany’s equivalent, Zalando. Last year he bought into Numis, the city of London’s largest remaining independent stockbroker.
Povlsen’s vision for his land has evolved over time. He had initially planned to establish a conference centre at Glenfeshie, just to the east of Kingussie and inside the Cairngorms national park, but was persuaded that he should be more ambitious than that. The estate, all 43,000 acres of it, has become Scotland’s leading example of ‘rewilding’. To that end, deer numbers have had to be controlled; nearly 1,500 were shot at Glenfeshie in a single season to reduce numbers to levels at which the deer and newly-planted woodlands can co-exist.
There is still stalking at Glenfeshie, but the rapid reduction in the number of deer has caused tensions with some of Povlsen’s neighbours. For a time a shoot-on-sight policy
operated at Glenfeshie to reduce deer numbers to just two animals per square kilometre (a concentration much lower than that found on neighbouring estates like Atholl Estate and Mar Lodge, where stalking remains the chief order of business).
Other Povlsen estates, however, have been left to their own devices, pending future development. The 30,000 acre prime stalking estate of Braeroy, for instance, has been to all intents and purposes mothballed, with many of the locals who used to derive their income from stalking and ghillying now kicking their heels. And for all that Povlsen insists he wants to revive his Highland landscape, it remains the case that his companies do not – at least as yet – employ significant numbers of people.
According to Wildland Ltd, the company that Povlsen established in 2007 to run his estates, just 59 people are currently employed on Povlsen’s lands. Which, given that several millions flow in from tourism and grants each year, is not an onerous burden. Future plans for expansion may change that, of course. A £100m investment in a spa and associated facilities at Ben Hope remains in development, for instance.
Elsewhere, the renovation of old farmhouses continues, the better to provide the high-end accommodation Povlsen believes will reinvigorate Scottish tourism. Even so, there is a sense in which Povlsen’s commitment to what he has called ‘ecological restoration’ does not necessarily include much space for significant numbers of people.
The landscape may by filled with trees and wildlife, but it is not a working landscape as that has, traditionally at least, previously been understood. But then, as Povlsen’s defenders point out, the old ways have not always created sustainable enterprises and communities either.
Although there is ambiguity about Povlsen’s intentions, his stated ambitions are undeniably striking. They amount to what Thomas MacDonell, Povlsen’s man on the ground in Glenfeshie, calls ‘cathedral thinking’. The idea is ambition on a medieval scale and just as the great romanesque and gothic cathedrals of Europe were constructed over decades of painstaking work, so it may take up to a century to rebuild, or rather regrow, Povlsen’s Highland estates.
Instead of stone, however, these cathedrals will be grown in timber. ‘Rather than being elitist,’ said MacDonell earlier this year, ‘we are simply delivering at the high end. The reason people will come here, rather than, say, Patagonia, is because there are fabulous properties within a fantastic landscape.’
Povlsen, whose environmental ethics are said to be sincerely held, has said that his business interests impose significant
Although there is ambiguity about Povlsen’s intentions, his ambitions are certainly striking
environmental costs and that, consequently, his conservation efforts in Scotland are one way of offsetting the environmental impact of his businesses. To that end he has also bought significant land in Romania, establishing a wildlife reserve – complete with bears and wolves – in the Carpathian Mountains.
There are, of course, other advantages to owning land in Scotland. Legendary financier Warren Buffett once noted that land is an even better investment than gold, and it remains a great investment, especialy compared to the cost of acquiring land in Scandinavia. Certainly Povlsen seems to have ridden the wave: he spent £70m acquiring estates which his accountants now value at £125m (although he has invested heavily in renovations and upgrading).
With interest rates at historically low levels and stocks still moribund, the quest of the world’s super-rich to acquire tangible assets has supercharged land values. At the same time the current system of subsidies for renewables has transformed the finances of many Highland estates, meaning that families which may have been forced to sell can now hold onto their prime asset. The resultant tightening of supply has also helped push up the value of any estates coming onto the market.
There are other powerful incentives for the super-rich to invest in land. If used or claimed as agricultural land, Scottish estates are exempt from inheritance tax. Danish law requires Povlsen to pay property taxes on his foreign holdings but, even allowing for the reintroduction of sporting rates in Scotland, the tax burden he must shoulder here is modest.
There are also ample grants available to landowners, particularly those in agriculturally poor areas or those with important eco-systems. Povlsen’s estates have qualified for more than £2.5m in forestry grants and agricultural subsidies over the past decade. The largest grant, worth £1.6m was awarded for ‘investment in forest area development and improvement of the viability of forests’ at Glenfeshie.
Wildland insists, however, that such grants amount to less than 1% of the company’s investment in its estate and that, at present, investment in Povlsen’s Scottish estates costs him something in the region of £2m a year.
Povlsen visits his estates at least half a dozen times a year. He keeps a strikingly low profile, however, almost never giving interviews. In addition to the preference for privacy common amongst Scottish estate-holders, this may also reflect his family’s past experiences.
In 1998 the Povlsen family was targeted by a blackmailer who threatened to kill members of the family unless he was paid £1m. A series of threatening letters were followed by a break-in at the Povlsen’s family home in Denmark where the would-be extortionist left another warning note.
When the blackmailer, Kurt Hansen, was finally apprehended, he was carrying three sets of handcuffs, ankle cuffs, tape, a pistol and flammable liquids. Police later discovered disguises, a book on poisoning and a secret room under the floorboards of Hansen’s home. Five years later a Povlsen family friend was kidnapped in India by a gang who mistakenly thought the friend was a member of the Povlsen family.
Land reform campaigners view Povlsen with a measure of ambivalence.
For swathes of the SNP, there is a knee-jerk warmth toward Scandinavian influence
‘The fact Mr Povlsen appears to be doing the right thing and making welcome investments doesn’t justify a lottery in the land market,’ says Andy Wightman, the Green MSP and arguably the country’s leading authority on land ownership issues. ‘I don’t think it’s acceptable that anyone from anywhere can buy as much land as they like in Scotland.’
The government’s Land Reform Review Group has proposed establishing an upper limit on the acreage any individual can own. However, neither it nor ministers have given any indication as to what that limit – which remains a hypothetical matter – might be. If such a proposal was introduced into law but the limit was above the acreage held by Povlsen or the Duke of Buccleuch it would, in effect, be toothless, a matter of appearance and symbolism rather than of real substance. A lower limit, by contrast, would require major landowners to sell at least some portion of their holdings.
Hitherto ministers have been careful to stress that ‘good’ landowners have little to fear from the government’s approach to land reform. Only negligent or absentee or otherwise inadequate owners have reason to be concerned.
But it is not obvious how landowners can be sorted into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ categories. Nor is it clear how the law can be arranged to discern between different classes of landholder. Povlsen, for example, is undeniably absent, even if his environmental aims are deemed to be laudable. And there is also the unspoken political and cultural element: for large swathes of the ruling SNP, there is a knee-jerk warmth towards any Scandinavian influence, especially when the alternative is the plummy tones of traditional landowners whose main residence seems to coincide with the prime weeks for shooting, fishing and stalking.
Is land ownership a question of practicality or is it a philosophical matter? The answer helps answer another question: is it possible to have ‘good’ landowners at all? If the scale and concentration of land ownership in Scotland is deemed a philosophical abomination then the question of how owners actually manage their holdings becomes moot. In such circumstances, practicality matters little.
But land ownership is a matter of irony, too. Consider the manner in which ‘rewilding’ and other conservation initiatives are most easily achieved via the concentrated patterns of land ownership which environmental campaigners decry as the cause of so many of the problems elsewhere in the Highlands. In 2014, the polemicist and environmental campaigner George Monbiot hailed what he deemed ‘if not quite a Highland Spring, the beginnings of something different’.
Povlsen’s projects in Glenfeshie were inspirational examples of good land management practice; after years of what Monbiot would term neglect, the hills are, once again, alive. With deer numbers strictly controlled, rowan and birch and juniper and pine and hazel are thriving. More than 1,200 acres of forest have been revived with more on the way.
Monbiot is not alone in admiring Povlsen. In the opinion of Cameron McNeish, still perhaps the country’s most prominent hillsman, ‘The regeneration that has happened there [in Glenfeshie] has been nothing short of miraculous’. Glenfeshie, said McNeish, who lives in nearby Newtonmore, ‘really is the jewel of the Cairngorms’. Other environmental campaigners, such as the late Dick Balharry, have also lavished praise on Povlsen’s record of achievement thus far and his plans for the future.
That will not be enough for everyone, not least those who think a greater share of Scotland’s land should be owned by the people who live on it and for whom Povlsen’s holdings, however well-intentioned, are a form of moral disgrace. Povlsen may be playing a different game to that enjoyed by other major landowners but his estates remain, in this estimation, a play-thing.
His supporters demur from that view. At Glenfeshie and elsewhere, they point to the investment and struggle to see how, even in Scotland, anyone should mistake the wood for the trees. Besides, and in any case, is there really such a thing as land ownership? This, according to MacDonell, is another philosophical conundrum.
‘I don’t think Mr Povlsen or any of the 400 significant landowners in Scotland really own the land,’ he said earlier this year. ‘They have the land certificate but are custodians. The land remains with the Scottish people. That is my own Highland feeling. Anybody can enjoy visiting the land we are restoring.’