AWG Property to sell portfolio and make third of staff redundant - Redundancies bite at developer

08.02.08

the property arm of Anglian Water Group (AWG) is laying off a third of its staff and selling a portfolio of properties in a bid to make itself more attractive to a potential buyer.

AWG is selling AWG Property, which has 80% of its portfolio in Scotland, after deciding to focus on its core business as a utilities provider.

The sell-off has been prompted by Osprey, a consortium of mostly Canadian pension funds, which took over AWG in 2006.

Tony Donnelly, managing director of AWG Property, told Property Week: ‘It became regrettably inevitable that one-third – 15 members – of staff, would have to leave.’

The most well known casualty is Stephen Kelly, AWG Property’s west Scotland director and head of its Glasgow office, who was renowned for being one of its highest earners. Development manager Stewart Forsyth is expected to leave at the end of March.

‘A lot of these people were fantastic business developers who would go out and find lots of potential for this company,’ said Donnelly.

‘But with the shareholders’ primary focus being on the core business of water, the likelihood is the company will be much more limited than it was.’

AWG Property is also negotiating a sale of its 3,500 acre Strategic Land portfolio which contains several large sites that are going through planning for residential schemes and which could be sold as the business is ‘tidied up’.

Most of AWG Property’s assets are land and developments with a total estimated completion value of more than £410m.

The slimming down of AWG Property comes after AWG failed to sell it last autumn.

Property Week exclusively revealed in December that AWG proposed a sale of AWG Property for £30m as a part of its plan to focus on its core utilities business.

Donnelly said the business had initially attracted interest from several buyers.

‘Our hope was we would find a new investor that would want to grow the company,’ he said. ‘What happened then was the credit crunch, the property market softened and a corporate transaction did not happen.’

AWG appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers to advise on selling the company last year.

AWG’s move into property has been fraught with difficulty. In 2005 it took developer and contractor Morrison, which it had bought for £263m in 2000, to the High Court for allegedly overvaluing itself.

---

Be first to receive news with Property Week newsletters. Signup

| RSS HELP?

---

Tell us what you think

You must fill in all fields marked *

Story date 00:00 | 08.02.08

This field is for security, please leave blank.

Your Name*

Your Email*

Comment*