The news follows a meeting between Lend Lease managing director David Higgins, Bovis chief executive Luther Cochrane and Bovis chairman Sir Frank Lampl at Lend Lease Australian headquarters.
Cochrane and Sir Frank also met with Ross Taylor, who heads Lend Lease鈥檚 project management division.
Discussions between the four centred on devising a strategy for the company鈥檚 future and merging their respective staff in Australia and Asia. They also discussed renaming the company.
Sir Frank told 好色先生TV that the company intended to avoid redundancies in its Australian operation by relocating a number of staff to Asia. Lend Lease employs about 1300 people in the two regions; Bovis employs about 600.
Sir Frank said: 鈥淲e are hoping to create additional work in Asia in the next 12 months. Asia is experiencing an upturn at the moment; foreign investors are returning to China, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.
鈥淚n Australia, one would expect a downturn after the Olympics. That was certainly the case in Barcelona, but by then, we would hope to have enough work in Asia to allow everyone to be relocated.
Sir Frank said he did not envisage any redundancies among technical staff following the discussions. But he added that he did expect to lose a number of administrative staff, because of the overlap between the two companies.
He confirmed that there would be no job losses in the company鈥檚 European and US operation.
鈥淭he whole thing hasn鈥檛 been done to shrink the company. It鈥檚 been done to enable us to cover the globe,鈥� he said.
Sir Frank added that the new company was considering a number of proposals for a name change: 鈥淲e want to combine the names of the two companies and we have people working on it.鈥�
