Hawley/ADT
On exiting Uni-Kleen in 1977, his next purchase was Hawley Goodall, another poorly-performing company, this time in camping equipment manufacture. Ashcroft used Hawley to make a series of acquisitions, transforming Hawley into a business services group, ranging from janitorial services for hospitals and offices, to car auction services, and later with a focus on the security services industry. Through the sale of the car auctions division to the fast-expanding British Car Auctions, he formed a life long friendship with David Wickins, who he would later help take a majority stake in Lotus Cars, as well as finance other joint-ventures. By 1981, Hawley had made its first acquisitions in the United States, and its total revenues had grown to $27 million.
By early 1983, Hawley had built up a 20% stake in pharmaceutical packaging manufacturer Cope Allman. Ashcroft offered to increase his stake to 29.9%, just below the 30% level at which a formal bid for the entire company must be launched. Ashcroft and Cope Allman fought bitterly over the purchase share price and current holdings, with Cope Allman reporting Ashcroft and Wickins to the Takeover panel, after discovering that BCA had built up a 13.5% in the company. But the takeover panel found that the Ashcroft and Wickins were operating independently, so Hawley was able to increase its holding to 29.9%. At this point the combined holdings of Hawley/BCA in Cope Allman amounted to 43.5% per cent of Cope Allman, giving them the power to introduce sweeping changes without launching a full bid. Cope Allman was eventually sold to an MBO backed by Hawley and financed by Bain Capital, and then sold to Bowater in 1992 in a complex swap of assets with ADT/Hawley.
In 1985 Ashcroft and Wickins bought car sales dealership Henlys Group via a Canadian-registered company, Mipec. Controlled by Ashcroft's Hawley Goodall, Henlys was merged with the already owned funeral hearse maker Coleman Milne to form a Motoring Division. In 1989, Hawley Goodall sold its Motoring Division consisting of Henlys and Coleman Milne to the Plaxton Group, the bus and coach manufacturer based in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
In 1986, Hawley bought out Ashcroft's former employer, Pritchard Services, leaping to the second place in the U.S. services industry. At this time, Hawley had revenues of more than $1.3 billion.
1987 was a key year for Hawley. In the early part of the year, it bought Crime Control Inc. based in Indianapolis, for $50 million, placing the company in fourth place in the U.S. security market. Later in the year it bought ADT Security Services, the largest electronic security company in the United States. This purchase transformed Hawley into the leading security services business in the United States, and resulted in the majority of its revenues coming from the North American market. As a result of the acquisition, Bermuda-registered Hawley changed its name to ADT Inc. and decided to refocus its business around security services. At the end of 1987, the company sold its North American-based facility services business to Denmark's ISS A/S.
In 1987, Ashcroft bought out the existing shareholders of Wickins BCA via Hawley Goodall. Based at Blackbushe Airport to allow Wickins access to his treasured aviation division, which flew both Jet Ranger helicopters and Beechcraft King Air turbo prop aircraft, Ashcroft who has a disliking for such flipant expenditure immediately sold off the aircraft. Wickins joined the board of Hawley Goodall, remaining there until the Tyco takeover, but retired from BCA in 1990. In 1995 to allow for the Tyco transaction, the group decided to divest itself of BCA. The residual North American arm was sold to trade buyers, while the European arm was sold to a consortia of some 40 private investors, including Ashcroft via his Belieze-based investment company. In September 2006, BCA was bought by the UK-based investment banking arm of private bank Samuel Montagu & Co., a division of HSBC, personally netting Ashcroft over £200 million.
In 1997, ADT was sold by a reverse takeover to US conglomerate Tyco International for $6.7 billion, allowing Tyco to become tax-efficient.
Ashcroft disposed of large amounts of the Tyco stock which he had acquired as a result of the sale of ADT, explaining that he needed the capital to diversify into other things and that he never retained a substantial stake in any enterprise which he did not control. Ashcroft nevertheless continued as a non-executive director of Tyco, a role he still held in 2002 when Tyco CEO, Dennis Kozlowski, was arrested in New York in connection with personal tax offenses. Unease had already been expressed at Tyco at some of Kozlowski's corporate decisions and Ashcroft was amongst the directors who appointed lawyer David Boies to investigate irregularities in the company. In time, the exposure of management deficiencies led to Ashcroft demanding that the whole of the board of directors of Tyco should resign, to be replaced by new management.
Read more about this topic: Michael Ashcroft, Baron Ashcroft, Biography