Hays plc is a British multinational company providing recruitment and

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ...

services across 33 countries globally. It is 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 P ...

and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

History

The company was founded in 1867 as an operator of wharves and warehouses on the south bank of the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

.Hays plc
International Directory of Company Histories The name can be traced to Alexander Hay, who acquired a brewhouse there in 1651. It was redeveloped as a '

wharf A wharf, quay (, also ), staith, or staithe is a structure on the shore of a harbour or on the bank of a river or canal where ships may dock to load and unload cargo or passengers. Such a structure includes one or more berths (mooring locatio ...

', in fact an enclosed dock, in 1856 and renamed Hay's Wharf. It was rebuilt after the

1861 Tooley Street fire The 1861 Tooley Street fire, also called the Great Fire of Tooley Street, started in Cotton's Wharf on Tooley Street, London, England, on 22 June 1861. The fire lasted for two weeks, and caused £2million worth of damage. During the fire, Jame ...

and still stands; it was converted in the 1980s into a shopping and restaurant area known as

Hay's Galleria Hay's Galleria is a mixed use building in the London Borough of Southwark situated on the south bank of the River Thames featuring offices, restaurants, shops, and flats. Originally a warehouse and associated wharf (''Hay's Wharf'') for the por ...

. The

Kuwait Investment Authority The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) is Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund, managing the state’s reserve and the state’s future generation fund (FGF). Founded in 1953, the KIA is the world's oldest sovereign wealth fund. As of April 2022, it ...

acquired an indirect 34% holding in the company in 1975, increased to 100% in 1980, chiefly to acquire the property assets on the south bank of the Thames, which were sold to St Martins Property Group in the early 1980s. Southwark 1

To develop the management team for the services group, the Kuwaitis backed Hays' acquisition of Farmhouse Securities, a food distribution business owned by Ronnie Frost, and Hays then moved into chemical distribution and office support services with Frost and Peter David Thatcher Roberts as CEO.Breaking up the house Ronnie built
The Independent, 5 March 2003 In 1986, it purchased a personnel business called Career Care Group, which had been founded by Denis Waxman.Common sense will take you far
BBC News, 28 November 2004 Hays was also growing its business storage services which included the brands "Hays Wharf" and "Rentacrate". In 1987, a long-planned management buyout was completed, and the company launched an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

in 1989. Ronnie Frost managed the combined services group from 1987 until he retired in 2001. In March 2003, Hays announced that, following a strategic review, it intended to reposition itself purely as a specialist recruitment business and that the company would dispose of all non-core business, including its commercial and logistics operations. Following Hays' change of focus to a recruitment company, Denis Waxman became CEO in July 2004. In November 2004 Hays de-merged its DX delivery network which represented the final step in the transformation of Hays into a recruitment business. In November 2007 Waxman retired and was succeeded by Alistair Cox.

Current operations

Hays is a specialist recruitment group with operations in the UK and

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, Continental Europe (in Germany pronounced Hei(s), as health=Hei(l)), the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

and

Asia Pacific Asia-Pacific (APAC) is the part of the world near the western Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific region varies in area depending on context, but it generally includes East Asia, Russian Far East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and Pacific Isla ...

regions. It has a fairly equal balance of work in temporary and permanent recruitment, which contributes to financial stability through business cycles. Hays operates in 33 countries.

Involvement in price-fixing

In 2009 the Office of Fair Trading imposed a £30.4m fine against Hays for its involvement in

price-fixing Price fixing is an anticompetitive agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given ...

. The firm, along with five other recruitment firms, formed a

cartel A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. Cartels are usually associations in the same sphere of business, and thus an alliance of rivals. Mos ...

called the Construction Recruitment Forum which agreed to boycott Parc, a new company that had entered the market in 2003 to act as an intermediary between construction firms and recruitment firms. The six firms received fines totalling £39.3m, Hays receiving the biggest fine. Hays had its fine cut by the Competition Appeal Tribunal from £30.4m to £5.9m following an appeal against the level of a fine imposed by the Office of Fair Trading in September 2009.

References

External links

* {{Labour Hire Companies based in the London Borough of Camden Consulting firms established in 1867 Employment agencies of the United Kingdom English brands Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange Human resource management consulting firms