Hanson UK, formerly Hanson Trust plc, is a British-based building materials company, headquartered in
Maidenhead
Maidenhead is a market town in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the county of Berkshire, England, on the southwestern bank of the River Thames. It had an estimated population of 70,374 and forms part of the border with southern Bu ...
. The company has been a subsidiary of the German company
HeidelbergCement
HeidelbergCement is a German multinational building materials company headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany. It is a DAX corporation and is one of the largest building materials companies in the world. On 1 July 2016, HeidelbergCement AG complet ...
since August 2007, and was formerly listed on the
London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...
and a constituent of the
FTSE 100 Index
The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index, also called the FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 100, FTSE, or, informally, the "Footsie" , is a share index of the 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange with (in principle) the highest market ...
.
History
Hanson was built up by James Hanson, later
Lord Hanson
James Edward, Baron Hanson (20 January 1922 – 1 November 2004) was an English Conservative industrialist who built his businesses through the process of leveraged buyouts through Hanson plc.
Career
Educated at Elland Grammar School nea ...
, and Gordon White, later
Baron White of Hull, who set up Hanson Trust in 1964.
Hanson and White were willing to take a wide range of measures to do so, including mass redundancies, and therefore attracted opposition and accusations that they were
asset strippers,
but from 1979 the company was successful from the shareholders' point of view and respected during the early 1980s, with Hanson (who gave millions of pounds to the
Conservatives
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
) admired by
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
.
One of the most notable takeovers, at least to the general public, was the acquisition in 1983 of the
United Drapery Stores
United Drapery Stores, or UDS, was a British retail group that dominated the British high street from the 1950s to the early 1980s.
Early history
In 1925, Charterhouse Bank set up Charterhouse Investment Trust. The trust started buying up dep ...
,
[ or UDS Group, which owned many of Britain's most well known high street clothes shops and department stores, including John Collier, ]Richard Shops
Richard Shops was a British high street retailer of women's fashion.
History
The business was created in 1936 by John Sofio, who modelled the business on the US company Learner Brothers. The company was bankrupt by 1941 and was purchased by ...
and the chain of Allders
Allders was an independent department store operating in the United Kingdom.
The original store was established in 1862 in Croydon by Joshua Allder. In the second half of the 20th century, this parent store was developed into a chain of depart ...
department stores. To fund this purchase, Hanson broke up UDS and sold John Collier to a management buy out team, and Richard Shops to Habitat
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
, keeping only the core department store business.
In January 1986, Hanson bought SCM, an American chemicals to typewriters
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
business. This included the paper division that was formerly the Allied Paper Corporation The Allied Paper Corporation was created in 1921 by a merger of three paper mills in Kalamazoo and Otsego, both in South-West Michigan, USA. The company grew steadily over the next 40 years but when local forests had been logged off and when profits ...
. Hanson sold most of the SCM business units and the headquarters building in New York City for a significant profit.
Its most significant single purchase, however, was probably its takeover of Imperial Tobacco
Imperial Brands plc (formerly Imperial Tobacco Group plc), is a British multinational tobacco company headquartered in Bristol, England. It is the world's fourth-largest international cigarette company measured by market share after Philip Mor ...
Group in 1986.[ Hanson paid £2.5 billion for the group then undertook a major reorganisation; divestitures netted £2.3 billion, leaving Hanson with the hugely profitable tobacco business for "next to nothing."][ Hanson sold off the food brand, ]Golden Wonder
Golden Wonder is a British company that manufactures snack foods, most notably crisps. These include Ringos, Golden Wonder and Transform-A-Snack. Since 2006, it has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the Northern Irish company Tayto, after bei ...
, to Dalgety plc
Dalgety plc—as Dalgety and Company—was for more than a century a major pastoral and agricultural company or stock and station agency in Australia and New Zealand. Controlled from London it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and Austr ...
in 1986.
In November 1988, Hanson went on to buy Consolidated Gold Fields
Consolidated Gold Fields was a British gold-mining company. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index until it was acquired by Hanson in 1988.
History
Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa was fou ...
for £3.5bn.[ The ''Gold Survey'' was taken on by a new company, now known as ]GFMS GFMS (formally Gold Fields Mineral Services) are research and consultancy company for the precious metal markets. Since 2011 they have been part of Thomson Reuters. As well as other commodities, they research gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and ...
. An attempt in September 1991 to purchase Imperial Chemical Industries
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was a British chemical company. It was, for much of its history, the largest manufacturer in Britain.
It was formed by the merger of four leading British chemical companies in 1926.
Its headquarters were at M ...
, once seen by many in Britain as the nation's leading company but then in decline, was highly controversial, and ended in failure.[ Hanson did secure the takeover of ]Beazer
Beazer was a family business for six generationsC.H.Beazer (Holdings) Prospectus, July 1973 before expanding in the 1980s into international housebuilding, construction and building materials group. After becoming overburdened with debt it was r ...
, a major housebuilder, that year.
By the mid-1990s, conglomerates were no longer popular with the investment community. Some of the manufacturing businesses were spun off as US Industries in February 1995. In January 1996, Hanson ended its time as a diversified conglomerate by breaking itself up into four separate listed companies: Hanson plc, Imperial Tobacco
Imperial Brands plc (formerly Imperial Tobacco Group plc), is a British multinational tobacco company headquartered in Bristol, England. It is the world's fourth-largest international cigarette company measured by market share after Philip Mor ...
, The Energy Group
Eastern Electricity plc was an electricity supply and distribution utility serving eastern England, including East Anglia and part of Greater London. It was renamed ''Eastern Group'' under which name it was listed on the London Stock Exchange an ...
and Millennium Chemicals.[ This cost the group £95 million in professional fees by August 1996.
Lord Hanson stepped down as chairman in December 1997.][ Led by ]Andrew Dougal
Andrew James Harrower Dougal (born September 1951) is a British businessman particularly associated with the financial management of construction and property-related companies.
Dougal worked with Hanson plc from 1986 in a range of general and fi ...
, chief executive from 1997 until 2002, Hanson focused on building materials, becoming the world's biggest aggregates supplier and the second largest supplier of ready-mixed concrete. In November 1999, Hanson acquired Australian building materials business Pioneer International.
Dougal quit the group in early 2002 to "rebalance" his life, leaving with a controversially large pay-off (variously reported at between £400,000 and £660,000, plus a pension top-up of £636,700).
In May 2007, HeidelbergCement
HeidelbergCement is a German multinational building materials company headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany. It is a DAX corporation and is one of the largest building materials companies in the world. On 1 July 2016, HeidelbergCement AG complet ...
announced its intent to purchase Hanson PLC for £11 per share, a deal worth approximately £8 billion. This deal made the combined company the second largest cement and building materials company in the world. The transaction was completed through Heidelberg subsidiary Lehigh UK on 22 August 2007. In December 2014, Heidelberg Cement agreed to sell its Hanson Building Products division to the private equity firm Lone Star for £900 million.
Operations
Hanson UK's principal markets are the major conurbations in England and Wales and the central belt of Scotland. The company supplies heavy building materials such as ready-mixed concrete, asphalt and cement to the UK construction industry.
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Building materials companies of the United Kingdom
Brick manufacturers
Conglomerate companies of the United Kingdom
Manufacturing companies based in London
British companies established in 1964
Manufacturing companies established in 1964
1964 establishments in England
Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange
British subsidiaries of foreign companies