Mitie Group is a British outsourcing and asset management company with their head office in Bristol. MITIE operates mainly in the UK and Ireland with a growing presence in Europe. It provides infrastructure consultancy, facilities management, property maintenance and a range of energy management services to its customers.
Their strategy of growth through acquisition has seen MITIE acquire several businesses over the past few years and in 2006 it acquired Initial Security, a leading security business. Following on in 2007 MITIE acquired Robert Prettie & Co. Ltd for £32.7m and incorporated the specialist plumbing, heating and mechanical services business into their Property Services division. In 2008 MITIE continued its acquisitions strategy through the acquisition of Catering Partnership, and DW Tilley. The purchase of DW Tilley allowed MITIE to extend their roofing services nation-wide. 2009 saw the acquisition of Dalkia Facilities Management for £130m to bolster its Technical Facilities Management capability and an expansion into Social Housing with the purchase of Environmental Property Services (EPS) for £38.5m. In 2010, MITIE acquired the integrated facilities management business of Dalkia in Ireland.
Who is paying for all this? We are through Mitie's public sector contracts.
Mitie is split into four divisions: Facilities Management, Technical Facilities Management, Property Management and Asset Management.
Mitie, whose annual report for 2010 notes: "The public sector faces the prospect of considerable pressure on expenditure in the coming years. We believe that this will create significant opportunities for the outsourcing market as contracts will tend to become larger and broader in scope . . . we believe that in subsequent years we will benefit from the efficiency agenda that is expected to impact central and local government."
So when Ruby McGregor-Smith in an interview with the Evening Standard in April waxed "lyrical about the huge potential opportunities that every outsourcing company in the land is eyeing following next week's General Election." That's our money, jobs and services that Ruby was eyeing up in the way a vulture eyes up a dying lamb. To say these people feed on the misery of others is truly not an overstatement.
Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/markets/article.html?in_article_id=503561&in_page_id=3#ixzz15fwk82X4
Around 40% of all Mitie's work is in the public sector, spanning healthcare, social housing and providing security for Britain's courts. For a relatively low-profile company, Mitie also has a lot of high-profile private sector customers. Its staff guard Marks & Spencer stores and the British Museum, as well as cleaning for Royal Bank of Scotland, Brittany Ferries and Everton Football Club.
National interest, or vested interests?
Outsourcing is a con and Mitie are in it for the long haul. The argument presented in favour of outsourcing is that it is cheaper to get someone else to do something for you than to do it yourself. This may be true if the task involves a technical complexity that you would not want tackle yourself; most of us bring in a plumber when we need one after all. But large scale business and public sector outsourcing does not work like this. The jobs that are outsourced to parasites like Mitie are the low-skill, low-pay, non decison-making jobs that overpaid CEOs think are beneath them to even manage let alone do. This is treating people as cattle or pawns on a chessboard, to be sacrificed for the good of the Queen.
Speaking of whom, Ruby McGregor-Smith has been Chief Executive Officer of Mitie Group plc since March 30, 2007. Previously, she served as Chief Executive of Mitie Services (Retail) Ltd. She served as Chief Operating Officer of Mitie Group plc from September 9, 2005 to March 30, 2007 and its Group Finance Director from December 2002 to April 2006. Prior to that, she was employed in senior financial posts at Babcock International Group PLC and Serco Group PLC. She has been an Executive Director of Mitie Group PLC since December 2, 2002. Ruby McGregor-Smith has been an Independent Non-Executive Director of Michael Page International plc. since May 23, 2007. After school and sixth-form college, she studied economics at Kingston Polytechnic, then joined accountancy firm BDO before leaping into the world of outsourcing by joining Serco in 1991. She climbed the Serco ladder for nine years in a variety of finance and operational roles.Her current Total Annual Pay Package at Mitie is £1,037,000 (Business Week).
On 18th October, Ruby McGregor-Smith signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's. She was no doubt thinking of the lucrative contracts her tory friends would be passing her way as they sacked underpaid public servants and employed Mitie at twice the cost and half the service.
For this reason Ruby McGregor-Smith is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all Mitie Businesses.
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