Have you heard that East Harding Construction of Little Rock is being sold?
Actually, it has been for almost 10 years.
Van Tilbury, the president and CEO, confirmed last week that he’ll be making just two more monthly payments on the stock buyout of Bob East and Tom Harding that he started in November 2009. Come Halloween, he’ll be the sole owner of the company that started as Robert East Co. in 1974.
For five years, East and Harding remained employees of the general contracting company. For the past five years they have been paid as consultants. All the while, Tilbury has been buying the stock that they owned in a 50-50 partnership.
When the purchase is done, Tilbury said, nothing will change. “We’ll keep on giving our clients great service under the East Harding Construction name.”
East, you may recall, was the majority owner of Advanced Cabling Systems of North Little Rock, which was sold in January to publicly traded ADT Inc. of Boca Raton, Florida. (It is operating as part of Red Hawk Fire & Security, which ADT acquired about the same time.)
But selling his companies doesn’t mean East is retiring. Not at all.
“I’m looking for other companies to buy. I have two on the radar already,” he said last week. “I’ve looked at probably 40 companies since we sold Advanced.”
