Keepmoat £780m management buy-out completed - top team hold 6% stake

David Blunt, chief executive of Keepmoat, has completed a £780m management buy-out of the regeneration and affordable homes group.

He and the management team will take a 6% share in Keepmoat.

The bulk of the funding for the deal has been provided by HBOS, the Scottish bank. It has refused to say what proportion of the sum is debt as opposed to equity.

The deal makes the two sellers both richer than the recent Euro lottery winner: Terry Bramall picks up a £270m fortune while Dick Watson walks off with £68m.

Keepmoat has over 3,000 employees and has delivered or improved more than 34,000 homes in the last 12 months. This throughput equates to one home being handed over every three minutes.

Turnover currently runs to £540m and the forward orderbook stands at £3bn.

HBOS has become a major player in the housing and property sector. Over the past two years it has stepped in with successful takeovers of McCarthy & Stone, Chelsfield and Crest Nicholson.

Two weeks ago it funded a management buy-out of Apollo Group, another social housing maintenance group, valued at £410m.

Keepmoat trades as Bramall and Frank Haslam Milan (both are contractors specialising in urban regeneration work) as well as Haslam (its new-build housing operation).

Bramall and Watson met while the pair worked for Taylor Woodrow. He persuaded Watson to come along when he joined the family business that had been set up by his father.

The two spotted the name Keepmoat on the list of names at Companies House and bought it, having failed to think up anything better.

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