Taggart buys English housing firm for €100m

Irish property developer Taggart Holdings has bought an English-based house-building company in a deal valued at close to €100 million.

Taggart, which has operations in both Northern Ireland the Republic, announced yesterday it had bought the entire share capital of Cecil M Yuill, a long-established building company in the north-east of England.

Neither side would reveal what the Irish company paid for the acquisition. Taggart director Michael Taggart said the company paid a "substantial sum" for the property group.

House-building companies like Yuill have been selling for between four and five times pretax profit in the UK.

Based on its pretax earnings for the 12 months to April 2nd of €22 million, its price tag would be €90-€110 million. It is thought that Yuill sold for somewhere towards to the top end of this scale.

Yuill is based in Hartlepool, in the north of England, and has been in business for the last 80 years. It employs over 200 people and builds more than 300 houses a year.

In the 12 months to April 2nd 2005, it had a turnover of €85.4 million. Mr Taggart said it had a substantial land bank for future developments.

He said yesterday his company did not plan to change the brand or merge it with its existing north of England business in Manchester.

"It will be a separate, stand-alone business," he said. "They have a strong management team there, and we're not going to change anything." The company's chief executive is David McNaught.

NCB Corporate Finance acted as adviser to Taggart Holdings on the deal, as did KPMG and Tughans solicitors. Bank of Scotland Ireland financed the purchase.

In a statement, Mr Taggart said that the move was part of the company's strategy of maintaining growth in Ireland and the UK.

"It provides us with increased presence in the north of England and complements the group's existing Manchester-based operations and offers us a platform to take advantage of what we believe will be a strong housing market in the UK over the next number of years."

Last year, around 170,000 new homes were built in the UK, compared with 70,000 in this country.

Taggart is one of a number of Irish building companies that have targeted the north of England. McInerney and Abbey, both of which operate in the residential market, also have a presence in the same region.

News of its acquisition came just after a weekend during which Taggart sold 100 new houses in Trim, Co Meath, for a total of €35 million. The homes, in a development close to the Dublin road, sold out in five hours.

Taggart Developments is headquartered in Northern Ireland. The company has substantial land banks in Naas, Co Kildare, Navan, Co Meath, Mullingar and Kinnegad in Co Westmeath, and Kilkenny.