Hanson plc

Hanson plc is an international company from the UK, which manufactures and sells construction materials. The headquarters of the companies listed on the London Stock Exchange in the FTSE 100 company is located in London ( England). Since September 2007, the company is part of the HeidelbergCement Group.

The company nearly 26,000 employees work (as of 2006).

In the 90 years of the 20th century, several areas of Hanson were split and spun off from the company. Previously, the company was consolidated with various activities in different industries and thus belonged to the largest businesses in the UK.

Company History

Hanson was James Hanson, later Lord Hanson and Gordon White, later Lord White, founded in 1964. The corporate policy of Hanson was buying undervalued companies and to rehabilitate profitable.

In the 70s and 80s of the 20th century belonged to Hanson, among other chemical plants in the United States, electricity suppliers in the UK and gold mines in Australia. Hanson produced cigarettes and batteries, toys, construction cranes and operating golf clubs.

The best known was the acquisition by the company Imperial Tobacco Group in 1986. Hanson paid for this £ 2.5 billion and reorganized the Imperial Tobacco Group.

The attempt in 1991 to take over the company Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI ) was unsuccessful.

Mid-90s, were corporations in the investment industry less popular, which is why in 1995 some production areas of the company U.S. Industries Hanson were cleaved.

1996 Hanson took a radical restructuring of their own company. The many industry segments of the Group were split and floated into four independent companies:

• Hanson plc
• Imperial Tobacco
• The Energy Group
• Millennium Chemicals

The Baumittelherstellung remained at Hanson plc, while the three other companies in the industry have been sold. Lord Hanson laid down the line of Hanson in December 1997. Recent divisions that were not attributable to the construction industry, were sold as new building materials manufacturer were purchased as Pioneer International of Australia and various companies in the United States.

In the summer of 2007, the German company HeidelbergCement acquired the company for 14 billion euros.