A property fund backed by Premier League celebrities including Sir Alex Ferguson has been launched to exploit the crash in shop and office prices.

Active Asset Investment Management, known as aAIM, has already raised £100 million from the firm’s partners and principal investors and £100 million from HBOS.

In another sign that investors are preparing to bet on the bottom of the market, Aberdeen Asset Management said this week that it wanted to raise £100 million from institutions to launch a fund to buy into a commercial property market that it said could bottom out from next summer.

However, Aberdeen fund managers said that they were unlikely to use bank debt for their fund because commercial lenders were reluctant at present to finance property transactions. It is thought that prices of some regional high street shops and retail centres are down 20 per cent from their peaks earlier in the year. The aAIM fund, dubbed Symmetry II, hopes to be one of the first big privately owned players in the market to buy close to the bottom.

Robert Whitton, the chief executive of aAIm, said: “There are good opportunities on an asset-by-asset basis. The bottom may not have been reached yet in retail. We do not see repricing lasting particularly long – six months, possibly longer. But that is a fairly limited window. It is fortunate to have funding.”

It is understood that the fund is in negotiations to buy a retail property valued at about £90 million. The building could have sold for about 20 per cent more had it been on the market a year ago.

The fund raises extra cash from a club of investors on each deal it makes and should eventually grow to €2billion (£1.4 billion).

Mr Whitton added: “When we established the fund, we thought it would be 60 per cent invested in Europe and the rest in the UK. Given the dramatic changes seen in the UK property market it may be majority invested here.”

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