Retirement rumours exaggerated

Paris Moayedi has issued a Mark Twain-esque denial of stories that appeared in the Independent and Guardian: rumours of his retirement have been greatly exaggerated, he claims.
It has been doing the rounds in the industry that the Jarvis chairman was losing the plot, or the will to carry on, after a series of negative headlines concerning problems the company has had on its signature rail and school projects. And some shareholders reportedly want him out.
But Moayedi was on typically good form on Monday when he called CJ to set the record straight. As usual, the conversation centred mostly on the ignorance of the press, and why good news never makes the headlines. He has a point, but then rarely does a contractor suffer such a run of bad luck as Jarvis has recently. Last year it was a train crash, last month an apoplectic headmaster, this week disgruntled subbies...






It will be a sad day when Moayedi does retire, though from what he says, he won't be spending his retirement on the sun lounger. One of the industry's real characters and straight talkers, he is also a fierce defendant of the record of privatisation compared to nationalisation.
Dismissive of construction's slide into low-margin, lowest-price work, Moayedi has worked hard to ensure the same thing does not happen in the support services sector. Added value is his watch-word.
And then there's the sense of humour. I once asked him how he dealt with shareholders. He replied: "You'd be a bad manager if you ran the company entirely by the wishes of its shareholders. You'd be like a cushion at a cricket match - always shaped by the last arsehole that sat on you."
Ironically, it may be those shareholders that have the last word.