AS THIS issue of Cranes Today prepared to go to press in late November, the management teams at both Baldwins Industrial Services in the UK and its US subsidiary Phillips Crane & Rigging were seeking to secure the future of their companies.
The Phillips management, now led by Larry Bonnin, was said to be ‘a long way down the road’ of taking ownership of the Texas-based company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August. Meanwhile in the UK, a management buyout bid led by 43-year-old managing director Rick Barnett was among the bids submitted with the administrative receivers by the 19 November deadline. Barnett joined the company in April 2001.
Baldwins chairman and chief executive Richard Baldwin, and his son, operations director Wayne, left the company within days of the administrative receivers coming in on 28 October. Though the Baldwins family owns 63% of the company, they are considered unlikely to receive much from the sale, given that the company had about £83m ($125m) of borrowings at time of going under, which is about equal to one’s year turnover.
On deadline day itself, the administrative receivers from PricewaterhouseCoopers agreed the sale of Baldwins’ lifting gear subsidiary Loadtite. It was bought for £810,000 ($1.2m) by Brandon Hire, a general tool hire company looking to expand into lifting.
Brandon finance director Chris Sims told Cranes Today: ‘We were planning to bring some specialist equipment into some of our depots. We soon realised that we didn’t have a lot of expertise in lifting and this opportunity came up to get us from one to ten in one go.’
Branding strategy has not been decided yet but Brandon plans to continue with the equipment distribution business that Loadtite conducted under the Baldwins Global Distribution brand. Loadtite managing director Mike Hughes left for China the day after the deal was agreed to meet with suppliers.
‘The period of uncertainty is over and we can now look forward to growing the business rapidly in the next few months,’ Hughes said.
