ENTREPRENEURIAL COUPLE TARGET MAJOR TURNOVER BY 2024
A Scottish entrepreneurial couple have revealed they are on target for a £500m a year turnover by 2024.
Graeme and Leanne Carling (pictured above) quit their jobs at a food logistics company in Glasgow to move into property rental in 2015.
They combined life savings to buy their first house, gradually going from buying single properties to whole portfolios and now have more than 350 houses, studios and flats.
As a result, the pair is now one of the largest residential property landlords in Scotland. Carling Property Group has an asset value of £15m, with just five employees. The company claims to let properties at fair rates and stated that it is “Scotland’s only private, affordable housing provider”.
Graeme Carling explained: “We had saved enough money to scrape by for six months, so the pressure was on to buy properties and start getting an income, the early days were very analogue. We used to knock on doors to engage with would-be sellers, take out adverts in newspapers and post leaflets through letterboxes.”
The couple went on to launch United Capital, an investment company that specialises in consolidating the UK construction sector by targeting building services and facilities management companies.
United Capital is an acquisitive business, with a projected collective turnover of £500m over the next three years. It has already snapped up five businesses – with a collective turnover in excess of £60m – within the past 18 months.
One of United Capital’s first acquisitions was rescuing construction firm McGill – a former Scotland Top 500 company – out of administration.
The other four acquisitions so far are: Alliance Electrical Services, Kingdom Gas Services, The McDougall Group and Saltire Facilities Management. The Carlings label themselves experts in “fastquisitions” and were due to buy a further two or more firms before the end of 2021, taking turnover to £100m since launching in 2019.
United Capital is “actively seeking” acquisition opportunities in the UK among cash-generative businesses with a turnover of £10m to £80m.
With offices in London, Edinburgh and the UAE, it is currently two years into a five-year buy-and-build plan. Leanne, 41, is mergers and acquisitions director at United Capital, with 47-year-old Graeme, being chief executive.
Graeme added: “We heavily filter any deal opportunities that are presented to us and have very strict acquisition criteria, so for our pipeline of deals to more than double, to over £1bn, after being filtered, is indicative of how active the M&A market is in the UK post-lockdown.
Leanne’s ability to source opportunities and construct deals that work for both buyer and seller is second to none, and is in large part responsible for the investment company’s strategic goal to reach group turnover of £500m by 2024.”
