Berkeley: ready cash waiting for administration bargains

Berkeley earned itself press coverage over the weekend when Rob Perrins, the house builder’s finance director, upgraded the virtue of cash to an even higher level than normal.

Perrins told the Financial Times: “It’s often said that cash is king but I think right now, cash is emperor.”

The FT continued: “Perrins said one way the company would keep margins high was to refuse to build affordable housing in their developments.

“Asked what this would mean for those in need of such housing, he said: ‘that’s the government’s problem’.”

With plenty of cash rolling about, it might be expected that the downturn had now triggered opportunities.

However, the message for Perrins is that the collapse isn’t deep enough as yet.

“Prices haven’t yet come down,” he told the FT. “But when some of the smaller companies start going insolvent, we will be able to pick up land from the administrators much more cheaply. That will probably happen in the first or second quarter of next year.”