Pushing into property

Scotland's banks are scrambling to hire property specialists.

Irish banks are at the forefront of the move - Anglo Irish Bank recently poached 30-year Royal Bank of Scotland veteran Jim Brydie to head up its Scottish lending team. Brydie was recruited after the former head, Ken Hillen, left to join Bank of Ireland. Last year Bank of Ireland, Anglo Irish and Allied Irish all surpassed 1bn in Scottish commercial lending.

Scotland's homegrown finance houses are also in the market for property talent. Bank of Scotland is known to have lured some highly qualified corporate financiers to its property team, for example.

Demand doesn't look like abating anytime soon. Declan Quilligan, Anglo's UK chief executive, said Brydie - who has already been joined by Marcus Rennie from RBS - is charged with building the bank's Scottish property team.

However, one leading banking insider told us that there may be a problem with so many banks looking to grow. She says there's not so much a shortage of property people in Scotland, rather a shortage of people with the ability to build commercial property lending books: "To grow a book, you need someone with an entrepreneurial mind; they do not necessarily have to have years of experience but they have to have the entrepreneurial spark."