pete

Ellis has already done his homework and got Whyte interested in the possibilities. i.e. Building, plant hire all the industries they are both fishing in.

I would think that is easy to guess though i may be wrong. The development of Ibrox and surroundings.

To the young tycoon, it also looked like a growth sector. In 1993, Whyte bought over Vital Security. Acquired for about #120,000, it brought with it about #1m worth of contracts, boosting his turnover from #2.5m to #3.5m. In 1994, a succession of small companies was acquired, most of them being little more than the buying up of security contracts, and, in some instances, the debtors' book. However, the year did bring two significant takeovers. The first, of a security company in Manchester, gained Vital Security a toehold in the English market; the second - In Store Security and Property Protection Services - opened up a new avenue of retail security work, and triggered off a number of retail-sector contracts which were in place, including a major one with Kwik-Save. Other big contracts In Store has are with HMV, Superdrug, and Asda. In that year, too, he acquired his first overseas company, a 75% stake in the Vietnam Trading Company which, from a factory base in Hanoi, manufactures fire-proof gypsum ceiling tiles for sale in Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as Vietnam. However, it was Whyte's UK acquisitions that year which mattered most. They laid the foundations for further expansion in 1995, which began with another acquisition in England, Cathedral Security of Durham. Whyte also started up Custom Cleaning Services. Its role was to handle office cleaning, special contracts and industrial cleaning - all part of Whyte's strategy of creating a series of linked industrial service businesses fitting in with his client base. In support of that goal, he acquired Hire Access, which took him, for the first time, into aluminium scaffolding hire. In December, the young businessman clinched his biggest deal, taking over the plant and transport division of Hall & Tawse Scotland, a highly respected construction business which is part of the Raines Group. It was a considerable business coup. To acquire the division, Whyte beat off several predators, paying #75,000 for it, while also negotiating a deal worth #7.5m to lease back equipment to the company over a three-year period. Also flung into the pot were arrangements to provide Hall & Tawse with site security and contract cleaning services in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Dundee, and Edinburgh. The deal went through under his new company, Vital Holdings plc, which was set up specifically to bring all the various strands of his business together under the one umbrella. This year, the acquisitions have continued. The most significant to date has been the purchase of Scotland's Erskine Cleaning Services, which has more than doubled the size of his cleaning division. Its staff numbers about 50, while Erskine will bring to it a workforce of about 80. He is also pursuing a take-over which he hopes will result in him becoming probably the youngest chief executive of a company on the London Stock Exchange. While there are no certainties in life, it is reasonable to predict that, in Vital Holdings plc, we are witnessing the first stages of a young man transforming it into a financial power which will become a household name.

ONE IN A MILLION By TERRY HOUSTON Share 0 comments 15 Jul 1996 More and more young Scots are starting in business, showing commendable drive and initiative. They may not yet have caught the public eye but some achievements are nothing short of spectacular. In this exclusive series of extracts from the remarkable new book Young Scots in Business*, we bring you the young entrepreneurs making their mark in business in their native land AT THE age of 15, schoolboy Craig Whyte quietly lifted the phone and, for the first time, spoke to a stockbroker. Using cash he had saved from his weekend job, the teenager was about to play the Stock Market. Not realising the age of the confident-sounding young caller, the broking firm agreed to open an account with him. Soon it was handling regular transactions for its new client. By the time Whyte left school at 17, he had a larger bank balance than most of his teachers. Through shrewd stocks and shares manipulation, and the occasional reversal of fortune, he had amassed a sum in excess of #20,000. For Whyte, it was the first step on the road to becoming Scotland's youngest self-made millionaire. Today, at the age of 26, he is chief executive and owner of Vital Holdings plc, a conglomerate of companies providing a variety of services to the construction industry, retail stores, and local authorities, ranging from heavy plant hire, security services, and industrial and office cleaning. With an annual turnover in excess of #12m, annual profits of #1.5m, and a total of nearly 750 staff on his books, the group - in less than four years - is already up among Scotland's top 500 companies. For Whyte, it is only a beginning. He outlines his objectives extremely candidly: ``I want to have a substantial and profitable and world-wide business; I want to become a fully listed company on the Stock Exchange, and I want to have major league personal wealth, which for me is over #100m.'' He grins cheerily when asked why he wants such massive personal wealth, and says succinctly: ``It's just what you use to measure yourself against the Hansens, the Goldsmiths, and the Bransons of this world.'' He may be a young man in a hurry, but the last word anyone would dream of applying to him is brash. He is quietly spoken, friendly, refreshingly normal and straightforward, and quite without ostentation. The office in Wishart Street, Glasgow, from where he runs his fast growing business empire, is entirely functional and bereft of executive toys. Even the 500SL Mercedes at the door is a muted black. At school, virtually no-one knew about his secret hobby. He never mentioned it to his friends. To all outward appearances, Whyte was an ordinary teenager, enjoying the usual pursuits of a young man, with his circle of friends. The truth, though, was somewhat different. Craig Whyte was - and is - a self-taught Scottish business phenomenon. Who among us, at the age of 19, would be capable of walking into a bank manager's office with #20,000 capital and a professionally prepared business plan to finance the start-up of our first company - and walk out with the pledge of a #60,000 loan? Yet, not only did the teenager get the bank's backing, he also, in the same week, arranged deals with finance houses to acquire #500,000 worth of plant for his first business. Modestly, Whyte says the climate of the times helped him; he doubts if it would be possible for a person of that age to do so today. The 1980s was a decade when the Stock Market - before its eventual ``Black Wednesday'' crash - kept climbing. Very much a child of the eighties, Craig Whyte was capable of wheeling and dealing with the rest of them, although without the crass excesses of the high-flying yuppie dealers who were such a part of the London scene. Brought up in Motherwell with his sister, Adele, Whyte's background was one of comfortable affluence. It was also one where business was very much a way of life. His father, Tom, founded and ran his own successful plant hire company, first in Motherwell, then in Glasgow, before eventually selling out. His mother, Edna, owned a babywear shop. ``Business was all round us when we were growing up, and I obviously got very interested in ways of making money,'' recalls Whyte. Academically, Whyte was a fairly average pupil. Unusually, his parents left the choice of secondary school up to himself and his sister when the time came for them to move on from primary education. Whyte plumped for the fee-paying Kelvinside Academy in Glasgow, for no other reason than a number of his friends were going there, while his sister later elected to attend the local Dalziel High School. Looking back on that time, he reckons he made the wrong choice. ``I hated the discipline of it,'' he says. ``It was a rugby-only school, which I didn't play because I was interested in football.'' Every weekend, to earn pocket money, he worked for his father's firm, donning overalls to undertake manual tasks such as washing out machines or labouring to the fitters repairing plant. ``I'd read about traded options somewhere, so I got some information from the Stock Exchange about the market, and decided it was an interesting way to make money,'' he says. ``But you can get too cocky and too smart. Black Wednesday, in particular, hit me. I'd left school by then, of course, and was working for my father. ``I had just made a particularly good investment and decided to plough the lot back into the market when it collapsed. I lost quite a few thousand, but that's what can happen.'' The job in his father's firm was a lowly one. As a hire desk clerk, Whyte answered the phone, took bookings, and handled breakdowns and replacements. He also dealt with sales from the company's retail division. The decision to go into business for himself was actually forced upon him by his father's sale of the company to the BET Group. He decided to start up his own plant hire company, Whyte Hire, in McFarlane Street, near The Barras in Gallowgate, Glasgow. He did it with some boldness of style, too. With complete self-assurance, the teenage entrepreneur drew up a business plan to create a most substantial company, leaping into the hire market as a fairly major Scottish player - then got the financial backing for it. From his bank, he obtained a #60,000 overdraft facility, then went on to bring finance houses and HP companies on board to finance the acquisition of #500,000 construction plant. ``I was totally confident,'' Whyte recalls. ``If someone had come up to me and said they'd give me #10m, I'd have spent that, no problem at all.'' His confidence seemed fully justified. In the first two years of trading, business was exceptionally good and everyone wanted to deal with the company. Having an enormously versatile range of plant available - eventually his purchases were to rise to #1.5m - Whyte's firm was able to supply, at speed, a lot of equipment which wasn't so readily available elsewhere. In its first year, the business grossed #770,000, making a profit of around #150,000, and performed similarly well in its second year. During the third year of trading, however, things began to turn sour. In Scotland, the recession was beginning to bite and work for the construction industry - always among the first business sectors to feel the pinch - began to taper. Whyte Hire found itself sitting with far too much plant. Even then, Whyte would probably have weathered the downturn in business, but for another crushing blow. A blue chip construction company, which had been hiring a large percentage of the company's equipment, refused to pay a huge bill of #300,000. The dispute, which centred on claims and counter claims about massive losses of equipment, blew a vast hole in the company finances; the debt was greater than the business's net worth. Gamely, Whyte struggled on, but the task proved beyond him. For him, the final humiliation came when the bank, which always had been tremendously supportive of him, failed to meet a wages cheque for his 20-strong staff. Whyte put the business into voluntary liquidation, and it went down with debts of some #300,000. Later, when he started a new business, Whyte was to rehire many of the staff, quite a few of whom still work for him today. Unusually, the company failure didn't dent Whyte's confidence. ``It hurt my pride more than anything else,'' he says. ``For the first couple of years afterwards, I wouldn't tell anyone about it, I swept it under the carpet. Then I realised there's no point in doing that.'' Within weeks, Whyte was back in business. He still owned another small, sole proprietor security business, trading under the UK Security Group name, which employed about 30 staff. He also founded another construction plant hire business, City Plant, buying some of the old equipment from the liquidator handling the closure of his old firm. His straight-forward treatment of the finance houses also worked to his advantage because those which had rescheduled his debts continued to support him. City Plant - which is still operational today, although now from Bellshill, Lanarkshire - was a much smaller version of his original business, with an initial annual turnover of around #300,000. However, Whyte's attentions turned more and more to the security company. In a very understandable reaction to past events, he was extremely wary of taking on company borrowings; he wanted to be involved in a business which did not require heavy capital start-up. Security service work was attractive because it was cash-generative; you first landed the contracts, then hired the staff needed to fulfil them. It was a low-risk venture.

I agree with McCulloch's piece yesterday that December is going to be oh so important. The bigger and stronger the squad we have obviously the better.

That last video is quite impressive.

Well that counts him out for a loan deal then.

I think he will be giving you the middle finger for that remark. Hmmm oh maybe not.:grin:

Yes great read Cammy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KflvSRi6Vwg&feature=related

Rangers are weighing up an audacious loan bid for West Bromwich Albion's Scotland international Graham Dorrans. Manager Walter Smith has pleaded with the Ibrox board for January recruits to bolster his squad for their SPL title bid and the knockout stages of the Europa League. And while the English Premier League club wouldn't sell Dorrans, a loan stint back in Scotland could kick-start the midfielder's career following a recent spell on the bench at the Hawthorns. Sportsmail understands that Smith is a big admirer of the 23-year-old former Livingston player. Dorrans, who has five full caps after being brought into the national set-up by former Scotland boss George Burley, was a Rangers fan as a youngster and now West Brom boss Roberto di Matteo could hold the key to a move north. Dorrans returned to the Baggies team last weekend for the 4-1 victory at Everton but that won't prevent Rangers enquiring about the player who recently signed a five-year contract after a series of bids from West Ham reached �£5million. Rangers are also monitoring American international Oguchi Onyewu's desire for a loan move from AC Milan, although much would depend on whether the Serie A giants were prepared to subsidise the central defender's wages. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1334249/Rangers-eye-loan-deal-Graham-Dorrans--EXCLUSIVE.html#ixzz16ipCIGgn

RS, RS, RS RS, RS, RS, Tea anyone.:boogie:

So the tims got their way after all. Only 5 million masons to go.:smile:

At 2-0 Murdo MacLeod said it was over. Well done Calley!!:robbo::robbo::robbo:

Possible offside is all i can offer you.

I will leave the fingering to you Ally. I would rather wank a bear.

Fuck dignity Lennon and Celtic football club are wankers.

I never heard who said what and indeed the quotes in the Dutch version are also pretty tame but it is funny they ask him for his thoughts and then come up with a fact supporting the Celtic version. Somebody has misinformed them. Although the crucifix part makes a good newspaper article. The guy is a dick anyway.

Quoted in the main Dutch newspaper over the referee strike. The Dick can't play football and can't tell the truth. Typical tim.

The SFA make a laughing stock of themselves again.

I doubt if the refs going on strike will stop Celtic nagging. The tims are just addicted to moaning built on Paranoid Schizophrenia. There is no cure just medication. I am afraid the paranoia in them will let them see spooks even in the medication as in this strike.

With a Polish referee it would be even better.

This may be a stupid question but is Bob Malcolm still playing?

No but they can get a fixed penalty.:tongue:

Davy Weir for me as he also had a couple of attacking headers at set pieces.