CJ Pearce at centre of mbo

CJ Pearce has been restored to independent life just eight months after being gobbled up by Martyn Meade’s rapidly expanding Meade Corporation.

Operations director Ron McBride announced this week that he has staged a successful management buy-out. The company will switch its name back to CJ Pearce and annual turnover is expected to run to around £24m. There are 55 employees.

Meade bought Thyssen GB two years ago and changed its name to Butterley Construction. In April this year, he added CJ Pearce, the Telford-based contractor, and merged a major element of the overall construction capability into a single trading unit.

Managing director Charles Coward, who reshaped the business, retained Butterley Cymru, which trades in south Wales, as an independent unit - the two reasons for this being that it was losing money and it operates in a different sector of the construction market.

“Martin wanted to sell Butterley Construction,” a source said. “So we bought it out. Ninety percent of what we have was formerly CJ Pearce and just 10% was Butterley, so we’ve changed back to the more recognisable name of CJ Pearce.”

The four-man board will comprise McBride, David Hill, Graham Parry and Simon Hutchinson.