Chief executive aims to raise margins as company shares are traded on stock market

Taylor Wimpey became the UK鈥檚 biggest housebuilder this week after a 拢5bn merger. Its shares traded on the stock market for the first time on Tuesday.

The merger of Taylor Woodrow and George Wimpey will catapult the combined company into the FTSE 100, where it will join Barratt and Persimmon.

Ian Sutcliffe, the chief executive of the UK housing business (pictured), said the plan was to keep the housing businesses, Bryant Homes and George Wimpey, separate.

鈥淲e were wary of going the same way as past mergers where you end up going backwards in volume when you put two businesses together. We don鈥檛 want to shrink the businesses.鈥�

The UK housing business will be split into three divisions 鈥� the North, Midlands and South. Each will comprise 12 businesses producing about 22,000 UK completions each.

Sutcliffe said Taylor Woodrow and Wimpey had in the past been criticised for making margins of 12-13% 鈥� lower than the industry average. He said the plan was to address that: 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 do it overnight, but we are hoping to get to 14% in 2007.鈥�

Overall, the Taylor Wimpey Group, headed by Peter Redfern as chief executive, is to make 700 people redundant, leaving it with 13,000 staff.

The redundancies come from six office closures, including Taylor Woodrow鈥檚 head office at Solihull and Wimpey鈥檚 High Wycombe headquarters. Taylor Wimpey is looking for a new headquarters in the M40 corridor west of London.

Last week both companies said the weak US market remained 鈥渧ery challenging鈥�. They also warned that the UK housing market was slowing down and that the second half of this year would be tougher than the first.