Troubled housebuilder Vistry lays foundations with former Crown Estate boss

Vistry Group, the troubled London-listed housebuilder, is turning to a former executive at The Crown Estate to help repair its battered finances.

Sky News has learnt that Vistry, which has seen its shares slump by close to 70% over the last year, is in talks to appoint Robert Allen as interim finance chief.

Mr Allen is understood to have been acting as a consultant to Vistry - often described as Labour's favourite housebuilder - for several months, and is now being lined up to join the company formally, according to industry sources.

Prior to leaving The Crown Estate two years ago, Mr Allen also held senior jobs at Intu, the shopping centre group which collapsed during the pandemic, and Crest Nicholson, another of Britain's big housebuilders.

People close to Vistry cautioned this weekend that Mr Allen's appointment was not yet certain and could fall apart.

They added that he was not interested in becoming the company's chief financial officer on a permanent basis.

Vistry announced in June that Tim Lawlor, who previously held the role, would step down in October after helping chief executive Adam Daniels deliver its half-year results.

Mr Lawlor left the business earlier in the month.

If Mr Allen is handed the role on an interim basis, it will raise questions among investors about the broader recruitment process.

In a statement accompanying its half-year results almost a month ago, Mr Daniels said he was "pleased to say that we expect to announce the appointment of a high-quality new CFO imminently who will support me with the delivery of our strategy".

Vistry declined to comment on Saturday on its hunt for a new finance chief.

Like many of its major housebuilding industry peers, Vistry has been constructed over many years through a patchwork of acquisitions, including the £1.3bn combination with Countryside in 2022.

However, its shares have crashed amid surging costs and a difficult UK housing market, leaving Vistry today with a market capitalisation of just £763m.

The majority of Vistry's sales are undertaken through a so-called partnership model, with many of its homes pre-sold to local authorities, housing associations and PRS providers.

This led to it being championed in Whitehall by figures including Angela Rayner, the housing secretary.

The remainder of its new housing stock is sold, like rivals, to individual purchasers through its retail brands Bovis Homes, Linden Homes and Countryside Homes.

There has been growing speculation in the City that Mr Daniels would need to go cap in hand to shareholders to raise money through an emergency rights issue.

He appeared to rule out that possibility last month, however, saying: "We are committed to entering 2027 on the right footing and following the actions taken, do not anticipate any need to raise equity."

Industry sources said it had been working with Savills, the real estate advisor, on the sale of dozens of plots of land to rivals, in an attempt to raise tens of millions of pounds.

Earlier this year, it was reported that Vistry was undertaking a round of redundancies to trim its 4,500-strong workforce.

The company has also been hit by a series of internal forecasting errors and wider macroeconomic pressures.

A number of its major rivals, including Crest Nicholson, have been forced into negotiations with their lenders in a bid to buy themselves more financial headroom.

Andy Burnham's announcement in his Labour Party conference speech of Your First Home, a new government-backed scheme to stimulate the market, was seen as broadly positive for the industry as the government scrambles to hit its 1.5 million new homes target.

However, for companies such as Vistry, the precise impact of the new initiative is expected to remain unclear until ministers spell out how further detail of how it will operate.

"We are taking the necessary steps to ensure the strong performance we have seen across many of our sites is replicated across the group as a whole," Mr Daniels said last month.

"Achieving this has necessitated an urgent focus on increasing operational control, releasing cash, reducing complexity and establishing a base from which we can deliver more consistently."

(c) Sky News 2026: Troubled housebuilder Vistry lays foundations with former Crown Estate boss