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BSR International PLC
Early in October 1982, Mr Wyllie was approached by certain of the Directors of the UK public company, BSR INTERNATIONAL PLC (BSR), and informed that BSR, which then had some 12,000 employees with offices and manufacturing facilities in 22 cities in 12 countries around the world, was operating with unsustainable losses and needed help.
A number of BSR's bankers had expressed concern about the ability of the UK management to deal with the problems they were facing and two of them had threatened to appoint a receiver.
Following an intensive period of evaluation, which involved visits to most of BSR's manufacturing facilities in Taiwan, the UK and the USA, Mr Wyllie agreed to join the Board of Directors. Not long after this, the former Chairman and Managing Director of the company was removed from office and in November Mr Wyllie was appointed Executive Chairman with the task of developing a recovery programme which, in many ways, was a mirror image of that adopted a few years earlier in HUTCHISON INTERNATIONAL.
Like all such rescue exercises the process was challenging, not only for Mr Wyllie personally, but for the entire senior management and staff throughout the group. BSR's principal business was then the manufacturing of record players, electronics and home appliances. The electronics business was in excellent shape as this was controlled through ASTEC INTERNATIONAL LIMITED (ASTEC), a Hong Kong company which Mr Wyllie had financed through ASIA SECURITIES LIMITED during its start-up in 1973.
As a 40% shareholder at the time of the sale to BSR, Mr Wyllie was still Chairman of ASTEC so knew this group intimately. Together with Mr Brian Christopher, ASTEC's Managing Director, Mr Wyllie was convinced that ASTEC could eventually become the core business and the driving force behind the successful transformation of BSR into the world of high-technology electronics.
The major problem with the rest of BSR's manufacturing operations was lack of management and poor quality finished product. As recently as 1975, BSR had been the largest manufacturer in the world of record players and turntables for the audio industry, but with an ex-factory reject rate of some 25% by the time Mr Wyllie was called in, together with the random acquisition of some 13 industrial companies, all unrelated to the original business of the group and all but one losing money, its business had declined to the point where it appeared to have no future.
Because of this Mr Wyllie had to move quickly in order to stabilise the group's operations and stop the financial haemorrhaging then being experienced worldwide. Unfortunately, this meant that it was necessary to liquidate a number of the out-dated and obsolete industrial and manufacturing companies and, in consequence, to lay off more than 2,000 people in the UK and the United States.
For the year ended December 1982, BSR announced a net loss of £31.7 million. However, following an extraordinarily busy 1983, which saw major reorganisation of the group, a rights issue which was substantially underwritten by Mr Wyllie's ASIA SECURITIES LIMITED, and the imposition of strict financial controls and reporting disciplines, meant that BSR was able to report a major turnaround. The profit to the end of 1983 amounted to £13.1 million.
In 1984, BSR's profit increased further to £16.6 million. By the end of that year the group, which was now focussed on high technology electronics, was firmly established as one of the world's leading manufacturers and suppliers of high frequency switching power supplies for the personal computer industry. By the middle of 1984, BSR's market capitalisation, which at the time of Mr Wyllie's appointment was just £63 million, had grown to £466.74 million. Mr Wyllie took the opportunity to realise profits on a substantial percentage of his investment in the company and to start to wind down his involvement in the day-to-day management of the group.
At BSR's Annual General Meeting in 1987, Mr Wyllie resigned his Executive Chairmanship in favour of Mr Christopher, and shortly after this control of the group was acquired by EMERSON ELECTRIC in the USA