Engineering company Clough Ltd, which appointed a new chief executive this week following a major restructuring, has re-jigged the planned sale of its property development business.
Engineering company Clough Ltd, which appointed a new chief executive this week following a major restructuring, has re-jigged the planned sale of its property development business.
Clough had been aiming to sell the property business in its entirety to one buyer, but has decided to sell the assets separately.
Chief financial officer Andrew Walsh said the company concluded it could extract more value by selling the assets to different buyers.
He said some potential purchasers, including property trusts, had been constrained by the status of the developments.
Clough has also decided to complete some of the developments that are at an advanced stage, such as the mixed use development in Claremont.
Mr Walsh said the property assets had a book value of $50 million and the company expected to gain a premium of $15 to $20 million.
The property business includes a range of mainly residential and some industrial developments in Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria.
The sale of the property assets was part of the wider restructuring of Clough’s business, which has been battered by a handful of loss-making engineering projects.
New chief executive John Cooper, who represents 49 per cent shareholder Murray & Roberts Ltd, believes the restructuring is largely complete.
Former chief executive David Singleton resigned this week after nearly four years with Clough.
Mr Cooper joined South African engineering and project management company M&R in mid-2006 as its Australian chief executive and soon after was appointed a director and deputy chairman of Clough.
His appointment followed several other major changes at Clough, which was effectively rescued by M&R in 2004.
Jock Clough resigned as chairman at Clough’s annual meeting last November and was replaced by Mike Harding, an independent non-executive chairman.
Another unrelated change was the recent announcement that Stephen Rogers, chief executive of Clough’s oil and gas division, will be leaving to join Canadian underwater mineral exploration company Nautilus Minerals Inc.
Clough said Mr Cooper’s terms of appointment would be subject to a further announcement.
Mr Harding said in a statement the Clough board appreciated the work done by Mr Singleton in developing and implementing the first stages of Clough’s transformation strategy and wished Mr Singleton well in his future.
Mr Cooper has more than 30 years’ engineering and construction experience in Australia and South-East Asia.
He was with Concrete Constructions Group for more than 20 years where he was the Australian general manager before leaving to become managing director of engineering consultant CMPS&F.
