With sales of £16bn ($31bn) in 2007 and trading profits of £877m, Wolseley has operations in 28 countries, is one of the world’s leading suppliers of building materials, and the number one distributor of plumbing and heating products. But as Steve Webster, Wolseley’s chief financial officer, says, it is perhaps the company that most people know least. Although it was listed in the late 1950s and has been in the FTSE 100 for the past eight years, few people realise the breadth and scope of its operations.
Its growth since 1983 – when it made its first foreign acquisition in the form of Ferguson in the US – has seen the company almost double in size every five years. The 1990s saw Wolseley focus on becoming a materials distribution company – a process that involved a large number of acquisitions and divestments. Between the mid- and late-1990s, for example, the company sold about 70 manufacturing companies that were not aligned with its core business.
