Tulchan Estate is not for sale (again)
On Wednesday this week, Savills announced the “sale” of the 8800 hectare Tulchan Estate in Morayshire at offers over £67 million. Newspapers have reported the “sale” today (see above extracts from the Herald and the Times).
But Tulchan Estate is not for sale and its ownership is not going to change.
Tulchan Estate was part of Seafield Estate until 1973 when it was sold for £1.4 million to Tulchan Estate Company Ltd. It was then sold in 1976 for £1.2 m million to Enessy Co SA in Switzerland. In 1993 the estate was sold for £10.1 million by Enessy to Tulchan Sporting Estates Ltd. a company then controlled by the Litchfield family.
In September 2015, all of the shares held by the Litchfied family were transferred to The Jacaranda Consultancy SARL (as security agent) but with the Litchfield family remaining as Directors. Jacaranda later changed its name to Archimedes Private Office (Suisse) Sàrl who held the shares in March 2017 and which were then transferred to SF Scottish Properties Ltd. in March 2018 when Tulchan Estate was reported to have been sold to Russian born billionaire Yuri Shefler, the owner of SPI Group an international drinks company.
As I reported at the time, however, and as advertised in the sales brochure at the time (9.6Mb pdf) it was not Tulchan Estate that was being sold but 100% of the share capital of Tulchan Sporting Estates Ltd.
The estate is still owned by Tulchan Sporting Estates Ltd. and will be even after any “sale” announced this week goes through.
Tulchan Estate is not for sale.
Instead, what is for sale once again are 100% of the shares in Tulchan Sporting Estates Ltd.
Today, Tulchan Sporting Estates Ltd. is owned by SF Scottish Properties Ltd. a company registered in Guernsey which is in turn ultimately controlled by The Tulchan Trust also registered in Guernsey. Beyond that, it is impossible to find any public record of who the beneficiary of that Trust is (though presumably it is Yuri Shefler).
The implications of this are as follows.
The 100% shareholding by entities in Guernsey means that there will be no liability to Capital Gains tax. The shareholding was advertised at offers over £25 million in 2016 but we can’t know how much was paid for it as this transaction took place privately. At 24% CGT rates, a £67 million sale today would expose the seller to a liability of over £10 million.
The sale will not incur liability to Land and Buildings Transaction Tax as the estate is not being sold. The liability would otherwise be £3.3 million to Revenue Scotland.
As in 2017, the tenant farmers who have registered an interest in buying their farm should the landlord ever sell the estate will not have the opportunity to do so since their farms are not being sold. This loophole was drawn to the attention of MSPs in 2007.
In 2015, the Final Report of the Scottish Government’s Agricultural Holdings Legislation Review Group recommended that further consideration should be given to enabling tenant farmers to exercise their right to buy when shareholdings rather than the land is traded (see Section 8.3 and Recommendation 19 here).
Tulchan Estate is a large landholding as defined by the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 and ordinarily, if it were to be exposed for sale, would have to be notified to Scottish Ministers when the Act comes into force (which is 2-3 years in the future). Since the estate is not being sold, however, this notification will not take place and any community body that might have had an interest in acquiring any part of it would not be in a position to do so.
But it can be yours if you can find £67 million to pay to an undisclosed entity in Guensey.