26.11.2019

King to leave Power Towers

Brian King, the founder and former owner of UK aerial lift manufacturer Power Towers, is to leave the company at the end of the year.

King established Power Towers in 2007 with Mark Richardson and wife Sandra, before it was sold to JLG in 2015. King has a long history in the UK access industry and prior to starting Power Towers, King helped found CTE UK in 2002.
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Brian King

King said: “I have been in the powered access industry since leaving school in 1979 and together with Mark and Sandra feel very proud to have built Power Towers from scratch to becoming a very successful business, with very successful products. We decided to sell to JLG in 2015 and have been happy to continue to grow the business over the last four years with JLG, especially in the UK and Europe, also leveraging the global footprint of JLG. But it is time to move on and spend more time with my family. I wish Power Towers and JLG continued success as they move forward into this new chapter.”

JLG vice president Karel Huijser added: “It is with personal regret and warm wishes that I announce that Brian King has decided to leave Power Towers, effective 31st December. Brian has been formally handing over his responsibilities to Jonathan Dawson from the beginning of this year as Power Towers becomes more integrated with JLG.”

Vertikal Comment

The sale to JLG has overall worked out well for Power Towers, the Kings and Richardson. It provided a financial exit, along with the ability to continue to run the business they built as a stand alone company within JLG Europe, while benefiting from JLG resources, distribution and branding etc. Production and revenues since the acquisition have grown substantially, with plenty of upside potential.

However it is rare - even with the best intentions on both sides - for a company like this to remain as a completely stand alone unit within a large corporate business like JLG. It is almost five years since the deal was agreed, and both parties have largely done what they said they would do, in terms of operating at arms length and yet being close when support was required. But at bauma you could not but help but sense that Power Towers was gradually being pulled into the JLG corporate orbit or structure, not in a negative way – but running an entrepreneurial business that you own is totally different from running the subsidiary of a large publicly quoted group. And it so it is not surprising that King felt that it was time to complete the hand over. Jonathan Dawson was appointed as managing director in January, while King moved to chairman and head of development, and that process seems to be largely complete now.

King is though still relatively young and as passionate about the access industry and machine design as he ever was, so don’t be surprised if sometime in the future his name does not pop up again in some role or other.