Ex-Persimmon boss swoops on Avant

THE controversial former boss of Persimmon has joined forces with Elliott Advisors to buy one of Britain’s biggest housebuilders.

Berkeley DeVeer, a luxury property firm run and partly owned by Jeff Fairburn ( pictured), has teamed up with the ruthless hedge fund to buy Avant Homes Group.

The deal marks a return to the housing big leagues for the scandal-hit former FTSE 100 chief executive.

Fairburn, who led Persimmon from 2013 to 2018, was forced to quit the company following widespread outrage that he had earned a colossal bonus. The 54-year- old will be the chairman of the merged AvantBerkeley DeVeer group. Fairburn told the Times: ‘We look forward to working with the team to further invest in the business and develop it into one of the UK’s leading housebuilders.’ Avant builds about 2,000 homes a year, mostly in the north of England, and employs 780 staff. It has an annual turnover of around £500m and was touted to be on sale for this amount.

But Fairburn did not say how much his company paid for it and how much funding was provided by Elliott.

Fairburn has been out of the spotlight since he left Persimmon in 2018.

He had been in line to receive a £110m package that year because the board had failed to cap a long-term scheme linked to the company’s shares.

Fairburn agreed for the mammoth payout – which was labelled ‘obscene’ by politicians – to be cut and later took home a reduced bonus of £81.6m, according to the company’s annual report.

The housebuilder’s share price had rocketed over several years as the Government’s Help to Buy scheme boosted sales. Under Fairburn’s tenure, the profit Persimmon made per house nearly tripled – but it was criticised for shoddy building work that in some cases resulted in potentially unsafe homes.

He emerged as Berkeley DeVeer’s chief executive and a 50pc shareholder in the group last year.

Elliott Investors is an aggressive American hedge fund that earned the reputation as the world’s ‘most feared activist investor’ for its shake ups at businesses around the world.

Set up by billionaire Paul Singer, it has recently built up a small stake in Glaxosmithkline and has also invested in Whitbread and Saga.