Wolseley plc
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| Public limited company | |
| Traded as | : |
| Industry | Building materials |
| Founded | 1887 (London) |
| Headquarters | Theale, Nr. Reading, United Kingdom |
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Key people
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Gareth Davis (Chairman) John Martin (CEO) |
| Revenue | £13,332 million (2015) |
| £560 million (2015) | |
| £213 million (2015) | |
|
Number of employees
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39,000 (2016) |
| Website | www.wolseley.com |
Wolseley plc is a multinational building materials distribution company headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. 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.
Wolseley is listed on the and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
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. They took Herbert Austin as well as the Wolseley name. This new business belonged to a company incorporated with the name The Wolseley Tool & Motor Car Company Limited, later Wolseley Motors Limited. Wholly owned by Vickers it had no tie at all with Wolseley SSMC as Wolseley plc was then known.
Though he left Wolseley SSMC in 1901 and a few years later founded his own Austin Motor Company Herbert Austin maintained his lifetime close interest in its progress and was to become Wolseley's chairman of the board and served in that post from 1911 until his retirement when aged 67 in 1933.
In 1960 Wolseley bought Nu-Way Heating Limited which was the beginning of its transformation into a heating and building supplies business. Nu-Way's spare parts components business developed into OBC (Oil Burner Components). In 1965 Wolseley purchased Granville Controls and Yorkshire Heating Supplies to complement OBC's product range. From 1973 the products of these three manufacturing businesses were sold through Wolseley-Hughes Merchants, which was founded in that year. It later changed its name to Wolseley Centres.
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Wikipedia