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 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 marke ...

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 ...

, 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) 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 from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...

. One of the most notable takeovers, at least to the general public, was the acquisition in 1983 of the United Drapery Stores, or UDS Group, which owned many of Britain's most well known high street clothes shops and department stores, including John Collier, Richard Shops and the chain of Allders 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. Hanson Ketton Cement Plant

In January 1986, Hanson bought SCM, an American chemicals to typewriters 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 Mo ...

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 for £3.5bn. The ''Gold Survey'' was taken on by a new company, now known as GFMS. 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 ...

, 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, 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,

, The Energy Group and

Millennium Chemicals Millennium Inorganic Chemicals is a Hunt Valley, Maryland based chemical company. The business was established in 1985. It was a subsidiary of British conglomerate Hanson plc at one time, but was demerged on 1 October 1996, when it became an i ...

. 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, 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 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