A letter from our Chairman

Dear Friends,

M Group is the UK’s leading supplier of infrastructure services, bringing together the skills and expertise required to deliver high-value services through long-term, trusted relationships with the UK’s leading infrastructure owning companies.

Despite our successes, we are still in the early stages of realising M Group’s potential through a comprehensive transformation of the business. When the current leadership team of Andrew Findlay, Chris Keen, and Alain Loosveld took the helm some three years ago, M Group was a portfolio of relatively decentralised companies operating under their own brands, with their own standards and systems.

In September 2024, following the investment by CVC, the new “M Group” brand was rolled out and we embarked on a programme to migrate towards common systems and platforms.

We believe that building robust, reliable and efficient infrastructure is a critical national mission.

Archie Norman
Chairman

The purpose of these changes was to enable higher quality delivery to our customers while maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit of each business on the ground. The brand change has been well received by employees and customers alike and the common platforming programme is progressing well with most of the benefits still to come.

The transformation of M Group is as much about people as it is about branding and systems. M Group is a highly operational business that depends on the skills, capabilities, and customer focus of our teams. With rebranding and common platforming our aim is to make M Group the best place to work for skilled operators, with opportunities to move across different sectors and develop careers working in a safe and collegiate environment. Under CVC’s ownership, we have strengthened leadership across the Group and invested in building a top calibre team both in the centre and in the divisions.

As we improve the operating capabilities of the business teams, we are also looking to add expertise and move up the value chain, offering an even greater range of services to our clients. We believe that rebuilding robust, reliable and efficient infrastructure, whether in energy, water, transport or elsewhere, is a critical national mission. To support this mission, we provide long-term solutions to modernise and future-proof Britain’s infrastructure and move beyond the “fix and move on” attitudes of the past.

Therefore, we are seeking to build capabilities which run across our divisions and help create higher value services to our clients; in the last 18 months we have welcomed Telent, Cyro Cyber, Aran and BGEN into the Group bringing digital solutions, data insights and technical services that strengthen our ability to deliver integrated, higher value services.

These are high-quality businesses with a great history, and we believe they bring a range of services we can integrate across almost everything we do. We expect to continue to add more capabilities in the year ahead.

Our financial performance has remained strong throughout this period. M Group is strongly cash generative, growing and has very strong financial backing. The investments by CVC and Searchlight funds have provided the stability and ambition to drive the business for growth.

As Chairman, my role is to support the leadership team in its transformation programme and to be available to everyone in the business and our clients. It is also to ensure we have a strong board and governance process that ensures top class oversight of safe service delivery and value-add for our customers. The Board meets monthly and with its committees is committed to maintaining leading standards of governance across the Group.

Given our ambition, the pace of change in the business has been relentless. Our work is done in Britain’s streets, airports, and stations; it’s done in the control centres, data rooms and cyber security operations centres; and sometimes it’s done in the remote, rural countryside by hard working team members who turn up for our clients no matter the weather. I want to thank them for all their hard work, skill and commitment, often in very challenging conditions.

Yours faithfully,

Archie Norman
Chairman