Wolseley (building materials company)
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| Public limited company | |
| Traded as | : FTSE 100 Component |
| Industry | Building materials |
| Founded | 1887 (London) |
| Headquarters | Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom |
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Key people
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Gareth Davis (Chairman) John Martin (CEO) |
| Revenue | £15,224 million (2017) |
| £995 million (2017) | |
| £783 million (2017) | |
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Number of employees
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39,000 (2017) |
| Website | www.fergusonplc.com |
Ferguson plc is a multinational building materials distribution company headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest heating and plumbing distributor to the professional market and has approximately 47,000 employees across 25 countries.
Its brands include Ferguson, Pipe Centre, Plumb & Parts Centre and Wolseley. Ferguson plc is listed on the and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
In 2017, the company changed its name from Wolseley to Ferguson, to reflect the United States being the predominant market.
Wolseley plc was incorporated in London in 1887 as a listed public company with the name The Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company Limited to fund and exploit the commercial potential of the sheep shearing machinery invented by Frederick York Wolseley (1837–1899). Its board of directors were among the most prominent businessmen of Australia and the size of its capitalization placed it among the more important new issues of that year. From the beginning, because machinery sales were highly seasonal, efforts were made to diversify operations beyond the sheep shearing machinery. Wolseley, with his Australian pastoral interests, resigned because of ill health in 1894.
Herbert Austin, who had worked on Wolseley's shearing machinery development in Melbourne Australia from 1887, when he was aged just 20, was appointed its manager and received a share of its equity. Seeking other suitable products Austin designed his first car in 1896 and for the next four years continued to develop and improve his designs. Though the board did allow Austin to purchase some machinery to build cars they decided around 1900, it was unlikely to be a profitable industry. In 1901, Wolseley's embryo car business was acquired by Vickers, Sons and Maxim.
This new business belonged to a company incorporated with the name the Wolseley Tool & Motor Car Company Limited, later Wolseley Motors Limited. Herbert Austin went on to found the Austin Motor Company in 1905 but still maintained a close interest in Wolseley and became its chairman serving in that post from 1911 until his retirement in 1933.
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Wikipedia