Simon Embley is stepping aside as group chief executive of LSL Property Services after 12 years.
Still only in his early fifties, he is to hand over his job on September 9 and move to the new role of deputy chairman.
Embley’s achievements are considerable – despite an occasionally hostile press, notably from the Daily Mail, although Embley declined to sue.
He has built up LSL – which owns Your Move and Reeds Rains chains, together with Marsh & Parsons and other estate agency brands, plus surveying and mortgage businesses – after masterminding the 2004 £42m management buy-out of Your Move and e.Surv Chartered Surveyors from Aviva, formerly Norwich Union.
The business at the time was heavily loss-making, but LSL swiftly started making a profit and has grown both organically and via acquisitions.
Embley went on to float the LSL business on the stock exchange for £208m in 2006, at which time he reportedly owned 7.6m shares then worth £16m.
Highly acquisitive, LSL purchased Reeds Rains, Marsh & Parsons, the former Halifax estate agencies, Lauristons and Davis Tate. It has also acquired a string of mortgage brokerages. LSL also owns a sizeable £11.8m stake in property portal Zoopla.
Today, the LSL business is valued at £472m.
In 2011, LSL handed nine of its senior directors thousands of shares that should net them healthy bonuses next March. Embley himself received 203,665 shares. At the time, the shares were worth £2.50. Yesterday, they were trading at around £4.60, just a little below their 52-week high of £4.78.
As deputy chairman of LSL, Embley should still be in place to benefit from the shares bonus, which depends on both the performance of the shares – which has easily surpassed the original target of £3.20 per share – and value to shareholders. See the link below.
A statement to shareholders names Ian Crabb as successor to Embley. Crabb was most recently executive chairman of Learndirect, and has headed up other business, none of which has been in the estate agency, mortgages or property industry.
The statement discloses that Embley will in his new role “maintain focus on the execution of LSL’s existing strategy to continue delivering shareholder value as the market recovers”.
Last month, LSL announced new £100m backing from four high street banks, and said that it planned to accelerate investment into its estate agency division to grow market share. In last year’s full-year results, it said that its estate agency business was 31% more profitable than at the height of the market in 2006, when transactions were double.
In its latest results, LSL Property Services posted a pre-tax profit of £8.4m for the first six months of this year, a major turnaround on the £7.9m loss in the same period last year which was driven by valuation claims provisions.
https://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/oldeat_news_features/LSL-directors-given-%C2%A31.64m-shares-incentive
Comments