Australian boss on NZ building mission
March 30th, 2008, 1:04 am Hobbies And Interests
FLETCHER Building chief executive Jonathan Ling doesn’t mind championing unpopular causes. He argues that Australia should stop pushing unskilled workers into training and should offer them jobs in manufacturing.
He wants corporate Australia to look east, to smallish and unsexy New Zealand, rather than just looking north, to Asia. And he nominates cardboard king Richard Pratt as his most admired leader, despite the Visy chairman’s price-fixing shame.
Melbourne-born Ling is a man who speaks his mind, and remains tirelessly focused on getting the job done — and then moves on.
In the three decades since he graduated with a bachelor of mechanical engineering from the University of Melbourne, by his own calculation he has worked for six companies in 17 different roles, enjoying the challenge of companies in a state of flux, but soon getting bored during quiet periods.
The 54-year-old’s latest role is no exception. In his two years at the helm of Auckland-based Fletcher Building, the building materials maker and distributor has demonstrated a voracious appetite for acquisitions, picking up five companies, including a deal in May to strengthen its foothold in the US market with the $US700 million ($A760 million) purchase of laminate products maker Formica Corporation.
Despite the downturn in the US housing market because of the subprime lending debacle, Ling has no regrets about the company’s venture across the Pacific, although he admits the timing was a tad unfortunate. Formica represents about 7% of the total size of Fletcher, although, so far at least, almost none of its profit.
“It’s a terrific business, it fits with our business,” Ling says. “The synergy is still very good and so I think it’s still going to be a very good investment.
“Could we have bought it a little cheaper had we been doing it now? Probably, but you’re not to know that at the time.
“If I could have predicted what was going to happen between September 2007 and March 2008, I’d be retired by now.”
The US move came as part of a broader strategy of diversification, both geographical and functional.
Back in 2001, when the business was spun out of the construction arm of Fletcher Challenge, the company’s only market was New Zealand, with half its sales in housing construction materials.
The supply of materials for the housing market now represents only about a third of its business, with another third in materials for commercial construction and the remainder in infrastructure.
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