History
The Company was founded in 1903 by Harold Maxwell-Lefroy, Professor of entomology at Imperial College, London, who had been investigating ways to kill Death watch beetles that had infested Westminster Hall, next door to the Houses of Parliament. Lefroy and his assistant produced an anti-woodworm fluid called Ento-Kill Fluids: ento came from the Latin name for insect. In 1925 he tried to register the name Entokill, but had to choose Rentokil Limited instead. On 14 October 1925, Lefroy was killed in a laboratory when an experiment produced poisonous fumes. His assistant, Elizabeth Eades, took over the running of the company, which was bought in 1957 by British Ratin. British Ratin became Rentokil Group in 1960. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1969.
The company became Rentokil Initial following the hostile takeover of its competitor BET (British Electric Traction) in 1996, but is still referred to as Rentokil.
For many years Rentokil Initial achieved growth of circa 20% each year under the leadership of then CEO, Sir Clive Thompson: during this period Rentokil Initial was voted "Britain's most admired" company. Thompson relinquished the CEO role to James Wilde, with Thompson taking up the Chairman role. Both left the Company in 2004, when the leadership was transferred to Brian McGowan as Chairman (appointed in 2004) and Doug Flynn as CEO (appointed in 2005) who presided over a succession of profit warnings, mainly as a result of the integration of the newly acquired Target Express parcel delivery firm into the existing City Link division.
During this period, the Rentokil Tropical Plants business, a which had expanded globally through the acquisition of numerous smaller plant rental companies around the world, was rebranded as Ambius.
Rentokil strengthened its foothold in the U.S. residential pest control market in 2006 when it acquired the Reading, Pennsylvania-based J.C. Ehrlich Co, Inc., the fourth largest and the largest privately held pest control company in the US.
In 2007, Rentokil sold the Initial Fire, Electronic Security and manned guarding businesses - previously known as Shorrock - to United Technologies Corporation. However, in 2010, Rentokil Initial acquired Knightsbridge Guarding Ltd and Perception LLP to re-enter the manned security / reception staffing business, to compliment the existing cleaning, washroom, Ambius and pest control businesses as an integrated solution.
In March 2008 the company came under the leadership of Chairman John McAdam and CEO Alan Brown, who had respectively served as CEO and CFO at ICI: the pair are famous for the breakup and sale of ICI to Akzo Nobel.
Read more about this topic: Rentokil Initial
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