Aristocrats, tycoons and billionaires … the people who really own Scotland

ONE of the world’s youngest billionaires is on course to become Scotland’s biggest landowner.

A major investigation by The Sunday Post has laid bare the 30 aristocrats, foreign tycoons and charities who own the largest chunks of the 19.5 million acres that make up the country.

It found Danish retail magnate Anders Povlsen, 42, has increased his portfolio to more than 170,000 acres the equivalent of 265 square miles.

The acquisitions have seen the father-of-four, who is worth almost £4 billion, cement his place as the third-biggest private landowner in Scotland, behind charity the National Trust of Scotland and hereditary peer the Duke of Buccleuch.

If he continues buying estates at the same pace he is likely to top the list within a decade.

Incredibly, there is no definitive register to show who owns what in Scotland.

However, research by Andy Wightman, an expert who has spent decades investigating land ownership, has revealed Povlsen has been buying up vast swathes of Perthshire, Inverness-shire and Sutherland since 2006.

The latest accounts for his Scottish conservation company, Wildland Ltd, set up in 2012, show his firm has now invested £81 million in Scottish estates and land, up from £65m in 2013.

Just 432 individuals like Povlsen own more than half of Scotland’s non-public land.

In European countries like Norway a country seven times the size of Scotland there are only 23 estates bigger than 10,000 hectares. In Scotland there are 144.

In Povlsen’s native Denmark, where he still lives, people are limited to only being able to buy 620 acres of rural land and must live in the country if they wish to buy a holiday home.

Officials for the businessman, who inherited a Danish fashion empire from his parents at 28, confirmed his firm now held 170,000 acres in Scotland.

They’ve previously argued Polvsen is driven by a fierce love of the countryside and conservation and point to the successful running of the estates he’s already bought in Scotland.

Some critics have speculated the retail magnate is investing in wild land because it can be passed on without attracting inheritance tax in his homeland.

Law lecturer and land reform expert Malcolm Combe said: “If companies like Google and BAE established such dominance in their field, they would find themselves falling foul of EU competition rules.

“But the same isn’t true over our land.”

Mr Combe was part of the Land Reform Review Group set up by the Scottish Government in 2012 to look at “radical” proposals and changing the country’s land ownership model. Their proposals led to the Scottish Government’s Land Reform Bill, which was published in June.

It is now working through the Scottish Parliament and includes plans to end tax relief for shooting estates and force the sale of land if owners are blocking economic development. It also includes proposals to clarify information on who owns the land.

The Scottish Government also hopes to put a million acres of land into community ownership by 2020. Opponents say the bill is an attack on the rich.

Samantha Cameron’s stepfather, William Astor, the 4th Viscount Astor who owns the Tarbert Estate in Jura, called the reforms a “Mugabe-style land-grab” and questioned whether estate owners were being targeted “because we don’t sound Scottish”.

In February, Richard Scott the 10th Duke of Buccleuch and Scotland’s biggest landowner with 241,887 acres announced he would slim down his estates within 10 years.

He said the move was down to his “absolute dismay” at the SNP’s land reform plans.

But the Scottish Government has rejected claims land reform measures will be unfair, insisting it believes “fairness, equality and social justice are connected to the ownership of land in Scotland”.