Hanna and his vistas

March 1, 2003
<b>Far from considering retirement, 60 year old Bett boss Ronnie Hanna still has many plans for his firm. He tells Steve Menary where he&amp;’s heading with Scotland&amp;’s last quoted housebuilder</b><br><b>Ronnie Hanna is something of an endurance man and not just when he is out running on the grassy knolls of Edinburgh. As chief executive of Scottish-based housebuilder Bett, Hanna is seeing a plan he put in to place more than ten years ago finally come to fruition. He was poached from rival Cala in 1992 and immediately decided that the group&amp;’s wide-ranging activities had to be pruned back to just housebuilding and commercial development.</b><br> Businesses from a haulage fleet to a plumbing arm were offloaded until Bett was left with a core 600-unit a year housebuilding operation, a development division and a chain of pubs and clubs in Dundee.<p></p><p> &amp;“We were always going to get rid of the pubs and clubs but there was no point selling the business just to put the money in the bank and get 5% interest,&amp;” he explains. &amp;“We held on to it while we were making good money.&amp;”</p><p> A &amp;£13 million management buy-out took the pubs operation private in September 2001, leaving Hanna with …

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