Martin Laing
British businessman (1942–2023)
Sir John Martin Kirby Laing (18 January 1942 – 27 December 2023) was a British businessman in the construction industry.
Martin Laing was executive chairman of John Laing plc, the firm founded by his great-great-grandfather James Laing (1816–1882), but resigned in 2001 when the company faced major losses in its construction business, ending 152 years and five generations of family management.
Early life and education
The son of Sir William Kirby Laing (1916–2009) and the grandson of Sir John William Laing (1879–1978), he was educated at St. Lawrence College, Ramsgate and Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Career
In 1985, he succeeded his father Sir Kirby Laing as chairman of John Laing plc. His uncle, Sir Maurice Laing, had also been chairman.
Martin Laing was knighted in the New Year Honours 1997 for services to the construction industry.
Laing remained executive chairman of the family firm until 2001 when its construction arm was sold for £1 to one of its subcontractors, concrete firm O'Rourke, run by Ray O'Rourke. The John Laing construction business was considered one of the blue-riband contractors of its day, having built high-profile schemes including the Second Severn Crossing, the Barbican Centre and the Sizewell B nuclear power station, and its sale was expected to fetch upwards of £100m. However, the business was facing a series of losses, eventually totalling £200m, on several jobs including Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, the National Physical Laboratory, a disastrous PFI scheme in Teddington, west London, and No 1 Poultry in the City of London.
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This entry incorporates text from “Martin Laing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.