UK Small Caps

LONDON (ShareCast) - Industrial conglomerate Lupus Capital (Berlin: LUO.BE - news) is to part company with executive chairman Greg Hutchings after securing new banking facilities.

Hutchings, formerly boss of industrial holding company Tomkins (LSE: TOMK.L - news) , will be replaced by Michael Jackson, former chairman of PartyGaming (LSE: GI000A0ERMF2.L - news) and Sage. Keith Taylor, formerly chief executive of Torex Retail (LSE: TRX.L - news) , joins the board as chief executive officer.

Current board member Denis Mulhall has been appointed as chief operating officer while turnaround specialist Paul Felton-Smith has been appointed to the board as chief financial officer.

The new chief executive's first major task will be to conduct a review of the company's operations and formulate an optimal company structure for the board's approval.

Lupus has reached agreement with its bankers on certain amendments to its debt facilities, including the roll-over of £155m of loan facilities, at a cost of £7.5m. The interest rate on the revised lending arrangements has also been increased to reflect current market conditions.

The company said it is currently trading in line with management expectations, but market conditions in the building products business in the US and Europe remain difficult, and are likely to remain so for some time.

On a bright note, there is some evidence that customers have stopped running down stock levels while the group's oil services business continues to perform well.

The ousting of one of the City's most colourful wheeler-dealers marks the end of the second coming of Greg Hutchings, who was chief executive of "guns to butter" conglomerate Tomkins for 17 mostly successful years at the tail end of the twentieth century.

Hutchings, who earned more than £1m a year throughout the nineties, resigned as chief executive of Tomkins in 2000 after accusations flew at the company's Annual General Meeting that he acted as if he owned the company, awarding himself unreasonable perks. A subsequent investigation cleared him of any impropriety during his time at the helm of Tomkins but came too late to save his job.

Expectations were high when Hutchings joined Lupus in February 2004, but Hutchings was unable to replicate the success he achieved at Tomkins which, at its peak, had a market capitalisation of around £5bn. It took Lupus two years to make its first acquisition under Hutchings when it acquired doors and windows seal company Schlegel for £84m in March 2006. At the time Hutchings said the purchase was the fist step to creating a ""mini-Tomkins with a private-equity twist".