Historic marque was eventually dropped in 2011 after firm was bought by Australian business a dozen years earlier
The Bovis name will return to UK contracting more than a decade after it disappeared under plans being drawn up by Lendlease’s new owner, Building can reveal.
The move to reinstate one of construction’s historic marques comes after it vanished in 2011, a dozen years after Australian firm Lendlease paid P&O £285m for its Bovis construction business in 1999.
Under its deal 25 years ago, Lendlease kept hold of the trademark for the Bovis name – which first emerged in 1885 when it was founded as CW Bovis by Charles Bovis.
The firm kept the Bovis brand for several years following the deal, first trading as Bovis Lend Lease and then Bovis Lendlease – before ditching it altogether 14 years ago.
Now Building understands that the new owner of Lendlease’s UK construction business, US private equity firm Atlas Holdings, will replace the Lendlease name with Bovis once it wraps up the deal by the middle of the year.
It is not known whether the new logo will include the famous hummingbird but Atlas is keen to revert to a name synonymous with its new acquisition.
A Lendlease spokesperson in the UK confirmed that the UK construction business will have a new name and brand, but declined to comment further.
The Bovis trademark will be included in the acquisition, which will see Atlas pay £35m for a business that last year had a turnover of around £500m and employed 600 people.
Most of its UK contruction team is based in London – it is currently moving out of its office of the past two years at Paddington into its project offices at Stratford – while it also has offices in Birmingham and Manchester.
Lendlease’s current jobs include the Google headquarters building in King’s Cross, which it is close to completing, as well as a scheme to turn the former Debenhams headquarters on London’s Oxford Street into mixed-use. It is also set to build a new stand at Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park football ground while it is bidding a £600m tower at 18 Blackfriars for US firm Hines, where it is up against Multiplex.
The Bovis name was arguably one of the most famous marques in construction along with Laing, Tarmac, Wimpey and Sir Robert McAlpine.
Laing was rebranded as Laing O’Rourke in 2001 after it was bought by O’Rourke for £1, while the Tarmac name remained after the firm demerged into two in 1999 – a building materials business which retained the Tarmac brand and a new firm for contracting that was renamed Carillion. The Tarmac name has continued to remain with the business currently owned by materials giant CRH since 2015.
Wimpey started out as a building and civils business when it was set up by George Wimpey in 1880 but later turned itself into a housebuilder after buying Tarmac’s housing arm in the 1990s as well as the homes businesses of Alfred McAlpine and Laing. It became Taylor Wimpey in 2007 following a merger with Taylor Woodrow, whose civils business has kept its name after being bought by current owner Vinci in 2008.
Tomorrow Building will publish a full analysis article on the Lendlease sale to Atlas
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