26.11.2009

What’s happening at MSD?

After more than a week of trying to work out exactly what is happening at UK based crane hirer MSD Lifting we can confirm that it is in liquidation.

Reports on the difficulties at MSD Lifting have been circulating for a while, but trying to get to the bottom of what has happened has proved to be a challenge.

In 2007 Maurice Johnson, funded by venture capital company NEL and Yorkshire Bank acquired the MSD Crane Hire business in an MBO from MSD Darlington which also operates a property and steel erection business and is owned by Peter Stephens and Stephen Gaylor.

The crane hire business was transferred into MSD Lifting and operated from the company’s two depots in Darlington and Gateshead. A statement from the company at that time said that it owned and operated 20 cranes ranging in size from 15 to 200 tonnes and employed 35.
Click here to see MBO at MSD

It seems now that MSD lifting was absorbed into JW Marine (possibly via MSD Lifting (Glasgow) Ltd) which is/was owned by Maurice Johnson and a Steven Thomson and Garry Stephens.

JW Marine has now been placed into liquidation.

Two other MSD Crane companies have also been registered, MSD Cranes & Equipment Ltd which appears to be operating normally and was registered almost a year ago with similar ownership to MSD Darlington – Peter and Gary Stephens along with Stephen Gaylor - and MSD Cranes Limited which was registered in September and has one director – Peter Stephens.

When we attempted to clarify the situation with MSD last week, we were told that the bankruptcy only affected MSD Lifting which covered lifting equipment and tackle and that the main crane business was unaffected. We were told that a director would call us back, but in spite of reminders this has not happened.

We understand that some cranes operated by MSD or most likely JW Marine, have been repossessed, although we have been unable to obtain any formal confirmation or details of this.

Maurice Johnson was previously involved with the buyout of the Taylor crane group after it got into trouble, and the JD Crane group, reportedly with some backing from Roger Taylor.

JD crane group owned Taylor crane company which in turn owned Quigley crane hire, the business soon ran into trouble and was placed into administration. The business was eventually purchased by a new company funded by the Bank of Scotland - GBK crane hire, which after settling down under the direction of Roger Quenby went into administration earlier this year.

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