Western Morning News (Saturday)
Top pay revealed at collapsed firm
ABOSS at collapsed South West construction giant Midas Group Plc was paid more than £½ million while the company was making huge losses, it has emerged.
Accounts for the stricken firm, which is now in administration with the loss of 303 jobs, show the highestpaid director made £504,000 in the 18 months to the end of October 2020.
This sum does not include pension contributions, so it is likely the director benefited further.
The payment was made in the same 18 months when the company made an after-tax loss of more than £2m.
The highest paid director was paid £443,000 in 2019, the group’s annual report and financial statements reveal.
In total, directors were paid £1,869,000 during the 18 months to the end of October 2020, with £53,000 paid in pension contributions.
At the time, the directors were chairman Steve Hindley, chief executive Alan Hope, Mike Hocking and chief commercial officer Scott Poulter, plus finance director Duncan Rogerson, who resigned in July 2019 and was replaced by Michael Ready.
Mr Ready left the company in March 2021 to move to Australia and was replaced by Peter Skoulding.
Mr Poulter left the company on December 21, 2021, the same day another former finance director, Mr Hocking, also left.
Mr Hocking had been a key figure at Midas since 1998, when he and Mr Hindley, now aged 72, purchased the company in a management buy-in.
Mr Hindley, who led that buy-in, was chairman of the Midas Group up until its administration and is among the most high-profile business figures in the South West.
He is a chartered civil engineer, a fellow of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Chartered Institute of Building and a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He was awarded the CBE in the 2006 New Year Honours List for services to the construction industry and was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Devon in 2009.
He is the chairman of The Great South West, the ‘powerhouse’ brand that promotes the local enterprise partnership (LEP) areas of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Heart of the South West and Dorset.
The organisation, led by an alliance of business leaders, LEPs, universities, colleges and local government, aims to deliver £45bn of economic benefit and become the leading region for the green and blue economy.
Mr Hindley, who has blamed the Covid pandemic for Midas’s collapse, is also a member of and former chairman of the CBI Construction Council and the SW Regional Council.
In 2019, he stepped down as chair of the Heart of the South West LEP after holding the position since November 2013. Mr Hindley has served as a trustee and chairman for the Devon Community Foundation, a trustee of Children’s Hospice South West and was formally on the board of governors at the City of Bristol College.
Midas Group’s chief executive Alan Hope was credited on the firm’s website, before it was shut down by administrators, as having “led Midas’ growth to a £250m-plus pa revenue business” since joining in 2004. The company said he had driven the group’s restructuring into five “customer facing companies” – Midas Construction Ltd, Midas Retail Ltd, Mi-Space (UK) Ltd, Mi-Space Property Services Ltd, Midas Commercial Developments Ltd, all now in administration – overseen a brand refresh and launched the new company vision ‘Leaders in Customer Service and Performance’.
Peter Skoulding, chief finance officer at the time of the firm’s administration, is a chartered accountant and was described on the Midas website as having “a track record of sustained strategic, commercial and technical success across diverse sectors”.