THERE can’t be many FTSE 250 bosses who started out washing dishes. Greg Fitzgerald left school at 16 with the equivalent of four GCSEs [three O-levels and a CSE] and found himself elbow-deep in suds at the Dart Marina hotel in Dartmouth.
“It’s got to be one of the worst jobs in the world,” says the executive chairman of Galliford Try, the construction/housebuilding hybrid that installed the retractable roof on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. “One night you’re doing the pots and pans and the next night you’re doing the plates and the teaspoons and the saucers — so there’s a bit of job variety, but not much.”
Fitzgerald gives a reedy laugh. After a year as a kitchen porter, he escaped for a job with Midas Construction in Devon, whose housebuilding division was bought by Galliford before it merged with Try.
Having spent 34 years with the company — nearly 10 as chief executive until he began his current job last October — he is preparing to hand over the reins. Fitzgerald will relinquish the “executive” part of his title in October, when Peter Truscott of Taylor Wimpey joins. Fitzgerald plans to stay on as chairman until November 2017.
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He will leave with a stake worth £14.5m and plaudits from analysts, who liken him to the housing grandee Tony Pidgley of Berkeley for his ability to read market cycles. Galliford Try’s stock market value was “exactly” £133m when he took the top job. After an opportunistic rights issue in 2009 to double the size of its housebuilding business, and the acquisition of Miller Group’s construction arm last year, it now stands at £1.5bn.
Galliford Try’s housing side, which mostly operates under the Linden Homes brand, sold 3,180 properties last year — an increase of 6%. The construction side, which is working on HSBC’s offices in Birmingham and the new Forth Bridge in Scotland, has an order book worth £3.5bn. The company as a whole is expected to declare record results next month.
It’s not bad — especially considering that many of its bigger housebuilding rivals are still recovering from near-death experiences in the recession. “You just feel a huge amount of pride,” says Fitzgerald. “I think that pride will turn to maybe feeling a bit odd when I walk out of the door.”
His 50th birthday last year was a factor in his decision to bow out. “I didn’t have a midlife crisis or anything but you do kind of sit there and think, ‘What’s it all about?’ And apart from wanting to break every record every time you go to the gym — which is a killer by the time you get to Christmas — you do sit there and think, ‘So, I’ve worked for Galliford for ever.’ And I started as a tea boy — well, the old chairman said it took me a while to get to be tea boy — and went all the way to chief exec. The company’s been at least as successful as any of its peer group in those 10 years, if not more successful.”
I check his boast with the stockbroker Shore Capital and it’s true: an investment of £100 in Galliford Try when he took over would now be worth £492 — versus £294 for the rest of the sector.
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Tall and whippet-thin, Fitzgerald speaks with a distinct West Country lilt. He is quick to laugh — “I’ll do the jokes,” he announces as I turn the tape recorder on — but is usually shy with the media. Our meeting on the top floor of Galliford Try’s London office has taken months to broker.
Although he is reluctant to comment on the subject, the manner of his departure was almost very different. According to several shareholders, relations between Fitzgerald and the board soured in the months before he surprised the City with his first resignation last September. His chairman at the time was Ian Coull, previously boss of the property investment company Segro, although it is unclear whether the two were openly at loggerheads.
“Greg was just getting depressed because he felt the board wasn’t behind him,” says a fund manager who describes Fitzgerald as “a bit of a wheeler-dealer” and “one of the sector’s standout executives”. “It had got pretty bad. The moment shareholders started hearing about this, we felt we couldn’t sit on our hands.”
Up to 10 institutions were said to have demanded Fitzgerald’s reinstatement. A month later, Galliford Try stunned the market again by announcing Coull’s exit and Fitzgerald’s elevation to executive chairman, pending a new boss’s arrival.
He plays down talk of a rift: “Ian and I didn’t fall out. You can have a heated debate between a chief executive and a chairman but Ian and I never really had a cross word for the four years he was here.” The closest he will come to acknowledging tensions is to say the boardroom is “a better place than it was”.
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In March, a source familiar with the situation suggested Fitzgerald’s strong-willed nature had played a part in distancing him from some of the more conventional non-executives: “Greg’s a very complex character. He’s very driven but he has achieved what he has achieved without being an inclusive or cohesive force.”
“Where are you getting strong-willed [executives] now?” Fitzgerald says when I raise the point. He pauses, then laughs: “I’m probably strong-willed, yeah.”
Nonetheless, he insists that he delegates: “I don’t have too many ‘yes’ men around me — unfortunately. That would be good sometimes.”
He continues: “I like a good laugh. I’ve not got my head up my arse — I’ve come from humble beginnings. I’ve worked bloody hard and the people who are around me probably are of a similar ilk. Our board meetings are quite healthy, heated affairs, and no one’s ever had a problem with airing their opinion.”
Fitzgerald grew up in Devon. His father was in the navy, meaning the children often had to move schools. Fitzgerald’s break came when a chef at the hotel where he was working mentioned an opening for a trainee estimator at Midas. “You were paid £13 a week — of which my mum took £10 a week for rent, which I’ll never forgive her for,” says Fitzgerald.
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When he was 26, the founder of Midas entrusted him with setting up a housebuilding department. It was bought by Galliford in 1998. “There was a two-year earn-out in the deal,” Fitzgerald says. “Then two years and a day later I said to Galliford, ‘That’s enough for me.’ ”
He set up Gerald Wood Homes, specialising in big houses in southwest England, while staying on as part-time chairman of Midas. After Galliford and Try merged in 2000 he “cheekily” suggested the group buy him out again. Both times, Fitzgerald took payment in shares. “That’s my golden rule,” he says. “If I was a shareholder, my first question of any company would be, ‘What happens if it all goes wrong?’ And the answer for me to invest needs to be, ‘Well, it’s a disaster and I’ll be ruined’ — as opposed to, ‘Maybe I’ll cancel my holiday.’ ”
He disdains corporate executives who build up their stakes through long-term incentive plans, saying he has spent his own money investing in Galliford Try. He thinks of himself as an “entrepreneur first and foremost” and “not a natural large company plc bod”.
Fitzgerald enjoys the cut and thrust of analyst and shareholder meetings but says: “Most entrepreneurs would struggle with working in a plc world. I can just about deal with the nuances of corporate governance; I can totally understand why a lot of people wouldn’t have the time, patience or will.”
Unsurprisingly, he has little time for the suggestion that moving from chief executive to chairman goes against the corporate governance rulebook.
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“I must read the rulebook some time,” he says, pointing out the trend in housebuilding: Pidgley at Berkeley, John Watson at Bellway and Steve Morgan at Redrow. “Those companies, corporate governance and all, seem to have done quite well,” he says. “I will be a back-seat driver.”
Fitzgerald’s famous ability to read the property cycle is similarly based more on “gut feel” than spreadsheets. He reckons the housing market is three or four years into an upswing that will end in 2020. He says an influx of eastern European labour will ease the soaring cost of bricklayers and scaffolders, which will help the industry produce 150,000 homes a year.
David Cameron’s target of 250,000 presents an “interesting challenge” and will be met only if the sector embraces pre-fabrication and the government provides more sites for affordable housing, he says.
“All government land should be turned on its head and, although they will get a smaller receipt, they should actually make the majority of the schemes affordable,” Fitzgerald says. “Rather than 80-20 in favour of private, why not make it 80-20 in favour of affordable? That’s where the big shortage is.”
He thinks construction, by contrast, has only just come out of years of recession.
Both of Galliford Try’s businesses “have got a great future ahead of them”, Fitzgerald says; it would “crucify” him to leave at the top of the market and see them crumble later. It would certainly make family dinners awkward: his brother Sean and one of his stepdaughters, Michelle, work for Galliford Try in Devon.
Would he dive back in to save Galliford Try if it got into trouble, as Morgan did at Redrow? “I’ve got every confidence it will work out with Peter [Truscott],” he says. “But if something’s been your entire life . . . I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t do whatever was necessary to help the company I’d built to where it is today.”
Vital statistics
Born: June 21, 1964
Marital status: married, with two stepdaughters
School: St Cuthbert Mayne in Torquay
First job: kitchen porter
Pay: £3.1m last year, including bonus and share award; as a non-exec he will earn £150,000
Homes: Exeter and Mallorca
Car: silver Range Rover Vogue SE
Favourite book: “I’ve never read a book in my life”
Favourite film: Gladiator
Favourite music: Level 42 and Madness
Favourite gadget: iPad
Last holiday: Mallorca
Charity: Rowcroft Hospice in Torquay
Working day
The executive chairman of Galliford Try, who admits he is “a bit OCD”, rises at between 5.45am and 6am. Greg Fitzgerald works out for an hour — in the gym at his family home in Exeter or at a hotel in London — before heading to work for a 7.30am start.
He spends most days in meetings, preferring to deal with issues face to face rather than through email. “I find there are too many people out there who don’t like confrontation and who don’t want to walk to the end of the corridor to have it out with someone,” he says. “Probably three years ago was when I sent my first email . . . I’m now OK sending emails on the iPhone and the iPad but I still do most of it from my secretary.”
Fitzgerald leaves work at 6.30pm. He often reads paperwork and makes calls to his senior lieutenants until about 10pm.
Downtime
“I struggle with the work/life balance — in fact, I struggle badly,” says Fitzgerald, who travels from Exeter to London on Sunday evenings and returns after work on Fridays. He enjoys playing or watching sport and going for walks with his wife. “But, if you’re totally into it, work kind of dominates proceedings,” he says.