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Nu-West Group Ltd. was a Canadian growth-oriented house building company that grew into an internationally diversified conglomerate. In 1957 Nu-West Homes was a small, privately owned, house-building company operating in Calgary, Alberta. In 1969, Nu-West Homes Ltd. became a publicly traded company and was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. By 1981 Nu-West Group Ltd. had become the largest house-building company in Canada, with diversified asset holdings of $1.9 billion, and over 3,700 employees. The company was heavily leveraged with debt used to purchase vast holding of real estate throughout Canada and the United States. This debt, combined with the recession of the early 1980s that saw land values tumble, resulted in Nu-West losing it place of dominance in the industry. ==Beginnings== Ralph Scurfield, Nu-West's president from 1957 until his death in 1985, worked long hard hours to build up the near bankrupt house building company into a multibillion-dollar business. Scurfield's route to housing development was circuitous. After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Manitoba, he was a school teacher in that province for two years, working the summers on construction jobs. In 1951 Scurfield abandoned his teaching career and drove to Edmonton, lured then, as others are now, by stories of opportunity and wealth in Alberta. Soon after his arrival, Scurfield got a job working for Cheseley McConnell, a small homebuilder who became one of Edmonton's biggest during the six years Scurfield worked for him. In 1957, two of McConnell's partners, Clifford Lee and Gordon Clark, were saddled with Nu-West Homes Ltd., a 12-year-old near bankrupt homebuilding company located in Calgary. It was rapidly sinking because nobody would buy its poorly constructed houses. Lee and Clark were looking for a manager to replace the one they had just fired. McConnell knew that Scurfield was eager to become a partner in McConnell's business. It was instead decided that each would buy 25 percent of Nu-West's then $60,000 assets and Scurfield would move to Calgary to revive the company. To come up with his $15,000 stake, Scurfield, in a classic rags to riches saga, sold his Edmonton home for $21,000, recovered the $9,000 home equity, and used $1,500 as a down payment on another house in Calgary. The remaining $7,500 provided half the money toward buying into Nu-West and the rest came from a bank loan. In 1981, Scurfield and his family owned 26 percent of Nu-West, then worth about $50 million. McConnell was the second largest shareholder with 21 percent. Scurfield took Peter Vast, a Dutch immigrant who was 10 years older and who had worked as a construction crew leader for McConnell, to Calgary with him as his only employee. The two men then set about repairing the shoddy workmanship of Nu-West Homes and, hence, to polish up Nu-West's reputation During the day, Scurfield and Vast would install towel bars and paint rooms that had been left unfinished. At night, Scurfield would do the estimating and bookkeeping and Vast would do draft designs for the 65 new houses they planned to build the first year. To further clean up Nu-West's tarnished reputation, Scurfield offered owners of Nu-West homes a five-year warranty, which was the first of its type in Canada. In 1972, the warranty was expanded to a ten-year coverage. The hard work paid off. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which had cracked down on Nu-West by chopping off $3,000 from any loan guarantee, removed the restriction. Nu-West's other major source of funds, Investors Syndicate Ltd., which had stopped providing mortgage money because of customer complaints, also restored Nu-West to its lending list. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nu-West」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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