Confident Mactaggart delivers higher dividend

MACTAGGART Heritable, the property group established in Glasgow in Victorian times, has recorded an eight per cent increase in annual profits helped by growth at its upmarket hotels business.

Accounts for the company, owned by the family of Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart, show the business made a pre-tax profit of £6.1 million in 2013, up £0.4m from £5.7m in the preceding year.

The growth in profits was driven by a 60 per cent increase in hotel revenues to £6.7m from £4.2m.

Writing in the accounts, directors highlighted the success of the new hotel the group had opened in the Soho area of central London in June 2013.

This is the third hotel opened by the group with entrepreneur Robert Nadler.

The operation runs what it calls affordable luxury hotels under the Nadler brand, the first of which opened in Kensington in 2006. It also has a hotel in Liverpool.

The group also recorded a big increase in the value of some of the property interests it has amassed in the US.

Directors noted group shareholders’ funds increased by 14 per cent, up £17.8m, to £148.9m at December 31 from £131.1m at the previous year end.

They said the increase was mainly due to a rise in the valuation of a property owned by a US venture, without giving details.

Signalling confidence, the company increased the total dividend paid in the year to £2.6m, from £2.1m in 2012.

Ms Mactaggart’s 4.7 per cent stake put her in line for a dividend around £120,000.

Mactaggart Heritable developed out of a business founded by Ms Mactaggart’s great grandfather, John, who began building tenements in Springburn during the 1890s.

Sir John, as he became, went on to build more than 2,000 middle class homes in the city and diversified into the property development business in London and in the US.

In 1925, Sir John’s son, Jack, set up the Mactaggart & Mickel construction business with Andrew Mickel.

After reducing its exposure to residential property in Glasgow over the years, Mactaggart Heritable closed its base on the city’s Bath Street in 2010 and moved its headquarters to central London in the same year.

It remains registered in Giffnock.

Ms Mactaggart is chair of the Commonwealth Housing body, which aims to deliver “Housing Solutions to Social Injustice.” The organisation is funded from investments made by Sir John.