Has Aukett finally found the plot?

As the results began to flicker across his screen he was optimistic. "We had got the impression that all the problems were being piled up on last year's results," he says, recalling Aukett's disastrous £2.4m loss in 2002. "I was hoping that this year's would show a profit."

Ripoll's face fell as he read on. Aukett had not only failed to record a profit, it had posted a further £157,000 loss. It spelt the end for the incumbent board. Within a month, Ripoll was grilling the non-executive chairman, Ian Mavor, about the board's perceived lack of European vision. And within three months, he was made chief executive, whereupon he replaced most of the board.

It was all a far cry from the confident predictions of Mavor's predecessor five years previously. John Thake was hoping for a tenfold increase in market capitalisation from £5m to £50m. As Ripoll took over, it stood at £4m.

The story of how the UK's only listed architect ended up in this position is the result of ordinary bad luck compounded by a lack of foresight. When the bubble in technology stocks burst, Aukett's orders for IT-related projects such as server farms had just trebled to 12% of its total workload. Then there was the impact on capital investment brought on by the 11 September attacks on the USA, the downturn in the London office market and the stagnation of the all-important German economy (see timeline).

65% of shareholders backed our proposals, including founder Michael Aukett

Jose Luis Ripoll, chief executive, Aukett

The twist in the tale is that Ripoll's new strategy has strong echoes of that announced by Thake back in 2000.

In 1997, Aukett allied itself with Imagina, a Spanish multidisciplinary consultant based in Madrid. Ripoll ran this part of the business and acquired a 13.6% stake in Aukett. In 2000 Aukett joined forces with a Belgian architect called Art and Build. Stephen Beckers, one of Aukett's new non-executive directors, comes from this company. Two years later, the firm reported a loss of £1.6m for the six months to 31 March 2002. In January 2003 it reported a loss over the year of £2.4m. Aukett then ended both alliances.

After it became apparent that Ripoll was to lead a revolt, the board wrote to its shareholders to explain what had happened. The letter read: "Mr Ripoll managed the company's joint venture with Imagina in Spain from its formation in December 1997 until the company disposed of its interest in July 2003, following a number of significant losses and cash funding requirements that the board was not prepared to continue supporting." The Imagina joint venture, it said, had recorded a loss of £208,000.

I didn’t think a board run by non-executive directors and an engineer was appropriate. We need good architects

Michael Aukett

Of Art and Build, the board said: "The company is now withdrawing as a result of its failure to generate any positive returns for shareholders in any year since acquisition." It added the Art and Build venture had resulted in a £289,000 loss.

Ripoll concedes "there were some problems" in 2002, but says they were part of the general downturn after the 11 September attacks and the corporate downturn associated with the dotcom crash. He does not take the board's claims personally. "The truth about the whole business is that they were just to get people scared and to back the former management," he says. "And I understand that."

Nor is Ripoll worried that he lacks a mandate for his present business strategy, which is to revive Thake's vision of becoming a pan-European architect. "The truth is that 65% of shareholders backed our proposals," he says. "We have support from many independent shareholders, many former head personnel at the company and Michael Aukett, the founder of the company."

He also rejects insinuations from the previous management that a company under his stewardship would indulge in reckless expansion. "Although there are many discrepancies in our views, I share some of the aims of the previous management," he says. "We still have no intention to expand. It's not about putting more money into Europe but developing a European network. It's time for Europe to start paying back investment from the UK."

There is more to this tale than sober British bean counters and reckless foreign expansionists. Ripoll has the support of former Aukett chairman Gerald Deighton, ex-managing directors Andrew Lett and Thake himself. He also received the vote of the firm's founder, Michael Aukett.

Aukett told Building: "I didn't think that a board run by two non-executive directors and an engineer was appropriate. What makes a practice is a good group of architects. A practice needs to sell good design, and I wasn't convinced we would be able to do that." He added that the decision to go public was a mistake. "Selling the quality of the design doesn't really go with plc companies," he said.

The four former managers all agreed with Ripoll's view that the company needed to embrace European opportunities instead of tightening its belt. "It's all about having a vision," says Thake. "We're hoping he will bring some entrepreneurial vigour and skill to the situation."

Ripoll's plans sound reasonable enough. He wants to restructure the firm into an "umbrella company" to draw in all of Aukett's European operations under one banner. "The idea is that some of the equities in each local partnership will be retained by the local manager for them to be part of the ownership," he says, adding that the arrangements in each office will differ because "each manager is different, each city is different, each country is different".