The UK chief executive of Multiplex, builder of Wembley Stadium, has quit, Times Online has learnt.
The departure of Jayne McGivern, 45, who was promoted to the chief executive position only last September, is a blow to Multiplex and throws into question the company’s commitment to expanding its development pipeline in Britain.
Her departure at the end of this week forced James Tuckey, Multiplex’s two-day-a-week non-executive UK chairman, back into the full-time executive chairman role he relinquished last year when Ms McGivern took charge.
Mutliplex, once one of Australia’s largest quoted companies, was taken private last November by Brookfield Asset Management, the Canadian firm formerly known as Brascan, for £3.1 billion after the company’s founding Roberts family decided to sell out their large minority stake.
Since the sale went through, Mutliplex has not announced any significant new development projects in the UK.
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Speculation was rife in the property industry that Multiplex’s UK executives may have wanted to try to split the British and Irish business off via a management buyout.
Brookfield first made an approach for the whole of Multiplex in February 2007.
Multiplex seems to be concentrating on expanding its asset management business in Europe, one of its three core strengths in Australia alongside development and construction.
Ms McGivern did not have to serve a notice period with Multiplex because her agreement allowed her to resign under change-of-control clauses contained in her employment contract, deal sources said.
Ms McGivern said: “I am very sad to leave Mulitplex. The company is in great shape with such a great team of people.”
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Scott Parsons, Brookfield’s European managing director, will be working side-by-side Mr Tuckey on the day-to-day management of Multiplex in the UK once Ms McGivern leaves.
Ms McGivern joined the company in December 2005 to run Multiplex’s development business before adding the UK chief role last year.
Her last big development project was managing a Multiplex joint venture with the brothers David and Simon Reuben, the billionaire property moguls, for a planned £600 million retail-led redevelopment of Newcastle city centre.
Another of Ms McGivern’s projects, a high street shopping centre in High Wycombe built in partnership with the Reubens, is scheduled to open this month.
In June last year the company listed its Multiplex European property fund seeded with 67 German assets valued then at €335 million (£227 million).
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Multiplex has said that it wants to grow the fund to “a couple of billion euros.”
About 60 per cent of the portfolio is retail, 10 per cent offices and 20 per cent nursing homes.
Multiplex is best known in the UK for its construction of the £757 million Wembley Stadium, which was delayed by more than a year, causing Multiplex to lose hundreds of millions of Australian dollars.
Ms McGivern was not involved in either the tendering or the initial management of that project.
Martin Tidd, formerly the head of Multiplex’s UK construction division, left the company in September 2006, handing extra responsibility to Ms McGivern to repair the company’s relationship with the FA.
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The stadium was finally completed for handover to the FA last spring.