More bad news in the construction industry, this time down in Texas where, as I reported earlier today, the horses and donkeys are also dying do to the drought:
A Central Texas construction company with roots to 1939 has notified state officials that it plans to lay off 300 employees and that the layoffs are expected to be permanent.What's interesting is how this company, which has been around for more than 70 years, got into trouble:
J.C. Evans Construction Co., which filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August, advised the Texas Workforce Commission about the layoffs in a letter dated Nov. 23. The state released the letter Monday.
Andrews wrote that the Leander-based company was trying to auction off quarries to raise money. When the quarries could not fetch a sufficient price, the layoffs were executed "across every position and job title."So they made the decision to chase after the housing bubble mirage and ended up dying of thirst in the middle of the desert. Kind of an apt metaphor these days for a company based in Texas.
For most of its existence, the company focused on commercial construction, including work on Mansfield Dam, baseball and softball fields for the University of Texas, IBM facilities and several state buildings around Austin.
In the early 1990s, employees bought out the Evans family, making the company 100 percent employee-owned, according to news reports. In the early 2000s, the company remade itself, focusing on site work at subdivisions for homebuilders.
Over the past year, the company's fortunes soured, according to the bankruptcy filing.
Business income fell from $155 million in 2010 to $54.7 million through Aug. 1.
The company also was a party to 18 lawsuits within the past year, and Caterpillar Financial Services Corp. repossessed $373,400 in machinery and equipment.
"dying do to the drought"?
ReplyDeleteLooks like the quarry auction was a last ditch effort. I don't think it's fair to say they made the decision to chase after the housing bubble so much as they ran out of every other kind of work to do first and then ran out of housing bubble last.
Speaking of last ditch efforts Jon Corzine testified yesterday:
“I certainly would never intend to direct or have segregated funds moved,” Corzine said yesterday during his appearance before the House Agriculture Committee, testifying he didn’t know what happened to the missing money. “I am comfortable that certainly on my part there was no intention to violate segregation rules,” he told lawmakers at another point. Bloomberg
The law is all about proving criminal intent but it comes out sounding so peculiar, like "didn't intend to steal the money, I just did it"