Edinburgh City Council bail out EDI
December 15 2009
EDI has been granted a £62m lifeline by its backer, Edinburgh City Council, after the local authority bought up the developers investment assets.The firm is responsible for regeneration of the city's Craigmillar estate and the Council will now draw up a long term business plan to ensure the troubled company can resume development within three years.
Lloyds banking group had been calling in £51m of debt which would have plunged EDI into administration, the council's acquisition means that the developer now has no outstanding debts however.
The council was required to borrow the money to pay for this debt incurring £3.5m of annual charges, this is expected to be offset by £3.9m of annual rental income from existing properties.
2 Comments
#1 Posted by Tim Maguire on 15 Dec 2009 at 16:53 PM
this will be the developer who turned up to his meetings in a Ferrari 559? The phrase 'national scandal' is over-used but it can be dusted down in this context.
#2 Posted by Victor Brierley on 15 Dec 2009 at 21:46 PM
A chap I know advised me of the whole 'EDI' conundrum years ago. Seen by my many as unfair and immoral, they seemed to be in the 'driving position' for a lot of 'difficult to set up' initiatives. Being part of the Council, they didn't find them so 'difficult' to get planned out. Defiinitely immoral, probably unfair and EDI made a lot of people rich. Almost banker-like but spelt slightly differently.
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