Trading conditions caused a 37% dip in pre-tax profits at Ainscough Crane Hire for the year to 31 May 2012, down to £6.9m. However, sales revenue was down just 1% at £96m.
In 2006, near the peak of the market and just a year before the Ainscough brothers sold the family business to a management buyout for £255m, the firm was making £10m pre-tax profits on sales of less than £80m.
The company today has around 1,000 staff across 28 depots, which is similar to the size of the business at the time of the 2007 MBO. However, fleet size has been scaled back a bit from 500 cranes to approximately 450.
Ownership of Ainscough has been choppy since 2007, on account of the MBO being backed by Bank of Scotland. This bank, as part of HBOS, was taken over by Lloyds, which then brought in Coller Capital to share the burden of majority ownership as part of a restructuring of loans. Goldman Sachs and venture capital firm TPG then took over Ainscough in December 2012
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