Basil Read CEO Marius Heyns announces retirement
Basil Read Holdings (BSR), announced on Thursday last week that CEO Marius Heyns will retire from the organisation effective from May 31, 2014 after ten years in the role.
Construction‚ mining and engineering group Basil Read Holdings (BSR), announced on Thursday last week that CEO Marius Heyns will retire from the organisation effective from May 31, 2014 after ten years in the role.
A day after reporting his company’s return to profitability for the year ended December, Mr Heyns announced his retirement after 10 years as CEO.
The company was now in a stronger position, having halved its debt in the year to December, he said. Basil Read now had "an incredibly strong balance sheet with cash on hand of R1.2bn, an order book of R12.5bn … and debt to equity is as low as 13%".
He said he had delayed his retirement as he "couldn’t leave where we were a year ago — it would have been very selfish of me to leave the management and board at that time".
Basil Read and other construction firms were fined last year for collusion relating to 2010 Soccer World Cup tenders. Mr Heyns said a positive outcome of this difficult patch was that it had encouraged transformation, training and enterprise development.
He said a key focus of his successor should be on further diversifying the business in order to ensure stability through the different construction cycles.
Mr Heyns said Basil Read submitted R60bn in tenders last year, and was awarded work of R6bn, while in the first two months of this year the firm had submitted R10bn worth of tenders and had been awarded R1bn of that.
Terence Desmond Hughes‚ the managing director of Basil Read Developments‚ has been appointed as interim CEO with effect from June 1‚ 2014.
“Basil Read has a strong and capable management team that will assist in ensuring that the appropriate business focus remains in place during the period when the process of seeking a successor for Marius takes place‚” the company said.
“The chairman and the board wish to acknowledge the significant contribution Marius has made to the company over the past 20 years‚ of which ten have been as CEO‚ and wishes him well for the future‚” said the company.
