All articles by Tom Bill
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CommentRob Smith: DL wasn't forced into marriage with Aecom
Senior partner at Davis Langdon on getting into bed with an American giant
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Are the shackles to come off at Crest Nicholson?
Stephen Stone was not giving much away this morning when asked about the reported £350m-plus bid for Crest Nicholson by pizza and pub entrepreneur Hugh Osmond.Osmond's listed Horizon vehicle is on the hunt for a deal after raising £420m earlier this year and the housebuilding sector has clearly caught his ...
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Housebuilder bonuses: have bosses lost the plot?
This week saw housebuilder Bovis Homes give 95,000 shares to chief executive David Ritchie in place of a cash bonus. The £282m turnover housebuilder said a cash bonus would be “inappropriate” given the state of the market.In a week when the Association of British Insurers made rumblings about the excesses ...
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White Young Green: investors brace yourself
Under Stock Market rules, White Young Green has got until the end of this week to announce its results. Gulp.If the word on the street is true, chief exec Paul Hamer and new chairman Mike McTighe are probably not expecting the most comfortable morning of their lives.Although the consultant engineer ...
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Laing O'Rourke and the awkward power games
The veil of secrecy surrounding the future of Tony Douglas, erstwhile heir to the throne at Laing O’Rourke, feels no closer to being lifted this week.Douglas is the inspirational and brash Lancastrian Ray O’Rourke drafted in as his replacement a couple of summers ago after a stint running Heathrow airport.When ...
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Pessimism postponed
Bellway boss John Watson is naturally a glass half-empty kind of guy and was in “muted recovery” mode at the housebuilder’s full-year results this week.Yes reservations were down from 6,556 to 4,380 and the average selling price fell 9% to £154,005. And yes the company posted the first loss in ...
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How bad must things be at Jarvis?
When former Jarvis finance director John O’Kane left the rail specialist last month to join engineering service firm Redhall, it reunited him with the firm’s chairman David Jackson. They had both previously worked together at rail engineer Peterhouse in the same roles.Back in the summer of 2004 Peterhouse received a ...
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Who'll do "a Parsons Brinckerhoff" next?
Contractors are still pondering the implications of Balfour Beatty's canny swoop on American infrastructure firm Parsons Brinckerhoff last month.The almost universal reaction has been one of envy at a deal that takes Balfour up the food chain and further into the white collar world of consulting while strengthening its US ...
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The blame game
Here we go again. This week has seen a fresh round of HBOS-bashing after Lloyds revealed a £13.4bn hit due to bad loans – 80% of which came from HBOS.Most of that 80% would have been the responsibility/fault of former head of corporate banking Peter Cummings, the man no journalist ...
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A question of honour
Chris Cole, chief executive of WSP, was careful not to be drawn on the thorny subject of bad debt in the Middle East, as he announced the engineer’s half-year results this weekWhen asked about his talks with UAE developers and the possibility of fee cuts, he wisely offered a “no ...
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Drawing a line in the sand
Architect Aukett Fitzroy Robinson was forced to make another uncomfortable disclosure to the City this week.Last week boss Nicholas Thompson had a judge wagging a finger in his face about the “delayed communication” of the exit of a senior employee to a client. This week brought news that one of ...
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Steve Morgan: fresh air not hot air
Someone that spoke to Steve Morgan shortly after he returned to Redrow via a boardroom coup in March said he was pretty upset by what he found.Or as Morgan himself might have put it: "F-cking furious".The scouser had been away from the company he founded in 1974 for nine years, ...
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How to get rid of a chief exec. Part I.
It would take three or four months to find a new chief exec for a company like Wolseley.So it's arguably no coincidence that it was three or four months ago Wolseley went cap in hand to investors to fund a £1bn rights issue.“Here’s your money,” the big institutions could well ...
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Pidgley hands over keys to kingdom if not the crown
Around eighty bankers, analysts and lawyers squashed into a meeting room at UBS this morning to hear Tony Pidgley's swansong as managing director of Berkeley.Despite speaking for 45 minutes there was still enough energy in the room for a round of applause at the end. "It's been a while ...
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Telford buys contractor... and breathing space
When AIM-listed housebuilder Telford announced yesterday it had paid £6.3m for fit-out contractor Clifford Contracting, the news must have caused a few people to do a double-take at their computer screens.In a City statement, the east London developer talked a lot about loan notes, call option agreements and aggregate considerations.Behind ...
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Is Mrs Pidgley missing her horses?
Earlier this week the wife of Berkeley boss Tony Pidgley sold 250,000 shares in the company. It leaves her with just over half a million but at £9.60 a pop she netted £2.4m from the deal.The wife of FD and Pidgley protege Rob Perrins offloaded the same amount and director ...
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Budget 2009: Draw your own conclusions, if you can
"I can't quite decide whether it was smoke or mirrors," said KBC Peel Hunt analyst Robin Hardy in summing up yesterday's Budget.Most observers said the Chancellor's economic growth forecasts were chipper to say the least and when asked to pick out the positives, there was generally an uneasy silence at ...
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Taylor Wimpey: How long before it does the 'rights' thing?
When Taylor Wimpey announced that it had all but dotted the i's and crossed the t's on its £1.6bn refinancing deal yesterday, there was a palpable sense of "thank God for that" around the City.The 10-month marathon had been brought to an end and when one deal insider was asked ...
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The Wrekin Ruby. The Italian valuers know "niente".
So, what’s the truth behind the Wrekin ruby?In case you havent heard, it's the £11m gemstone owner David Unwin junior used to shore up the balance sheet of the Shropshire based civil engineering specialist before it went under last week.Wrekin’s last company accounts claim it was valued at £11m by ...
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The power of the brand
So, Sir Robert McAlpine is the best brand in construction.So says a new list of the top 500 “business superbrands” in the UK anyway.The pathologically secretive contractor came in at number 101 on a list that was topped by Google, Rolls Royce and Sony.So publicity-shy is the company that the ...