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Private equity-backed Sage bolsters board with Laing O’Rourke housing heavyweight
A senior executive from the UK’s biggest privately owned construction firm and former chair of Aster Group has joined the board of private equity-backed Sage Housing.
Stephen Trusler, residential sector lead at Laing O’Rourke, has joined Blackstone-owned Sage as a non-executive director, a spokesperson confirmed to Inside Housing.
Until last month Mr Trusler had been a non-executive director at 30,000-home Aster Group for eight years, most recently heading up its remuneration and nominations committees.
He was Aster’s non-executive chair between 2011 and 2014, and has previously spent 13 years as strategy director at contractor Wates.
Sage Housing and its sister organisation Sage Partnerships has faced some high-profile personnel changes. In May, Sage Partnerships chair Michael Lyons, former head of the BBC Trust, stepped down after less than year, despite calling Blackstone’s involvement in the social housing sector “game changing”.
Rod Cahill, former chief at Catalyst, is currently interim chief executive at the for-profit provider. He was recruited after Joe Cook left Sage Housing after two years in May.
In June, the organisation appointed Brian Ham, development director at Home Group, to take up a newly created role of acquisitions director.
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New York-based Blackstone, which acquired a stake in Sage Housing in January last year and has an estimated asset base of $500bn, has faced controversy since its launch into the sector.
The National Housing Federation took legal action to stop the organisation calling itself a housing association and it subsequently agreed to drop the term from its name.
Sage Partnerships was set up last year as the sister organisation of Sage Housing with plans to finance the delivery of new social and affordable developments in the UK by partnering with landowners and developers.
Sage Housing bids for affordable units through Section 106 agreements with private developers.
The group has a pipeline of 8,000 new homes and plans to deliver 20,000 homes over five years.
