CULTURES OF SUCCESS - CHARACTERISTICS OF THE UKS LEADING MBO TEAMS AND MANAGERS

The purchase of a substantial shareholding in a company by its manager s-''the management buy-out'' (MBO)-was first pioneered in the United S tates in the early 1970s, Since then, MBOs have become an everyday fea ture of U.K, corporate life and an established stage in the corporate cycle. In any private enterprise society, where productive businesses change hands there will be opportunities for suitably motivated manage rs to run such concerns more efficiently than their current owners. Th e MBO began as a transaction technique in the United Kingdom in the la te 1970s with 13 MBO transactions being recorded in 1977, The number o f reported transactions rose consistently to a peak of 550 in 1990, Th e 1990s have seen an average of 500 reported buy-outs per year. Busine sses that have been the subject of a buy-out employ a total of 700,000 people and have an aggregate turnover in excess of pound 25 billion. There have been three distinct phases in the development of the buy-ou t:.