Agilia becomes Employee Owned and announces New Chair
Established in 2017 by Mike Pugsley and Amar Qureshi, who each have 25 years of experience working at the heart of major infrastructure projects, Agilia has grown to more than 50 employees including a number of apprentices. It is currently engaged on a portfolio of the most significant UK and international infrastructure projects across the water, energy and transport sectors.
Based in London and Teesside, Agilia reflects the geographical roots of its founders, with Mike hailing from Redcar and Amar from East London, which is also at the foundations of its commitment to being inclusive and genuine champions of social mobility.
Agilia’s reconstitution as an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) provides all of its employees with a share in the business and is designed to ensure that there remains strong cultural as well as financial alignment within the team.
As part of the reconstitution of the business, Agilia has also appointed James Stewart as its new Chair. James succeeds Fred Maroudas, who remains as part of Agilia’s senior team as a Senior Adviser.
Joint Managing Directors, Mike Pugsley (L) and Amar Qureshi (R) standing alongside Anne Tiedemann who takes on the role of Chair of the Employee Ownership Trust.
The Agilia Employee Ownership Trust, which now becomes Agilia’s majority shareholder, will be chaired by Anne Tiedemann, who has more than 30 years’ experience in strategic and operational management working in markets including the US, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.
Mike Pugsley Joint Managing Director and Co-Founder of Agilia, said:
Amar and I are both proud of what we have achieved to date, and our change in ownership structure has been prompted by a desire to ensure that we embed a long-term sustainable structure for the business.
“We wanted our organisation to more closely reflect what we aim to do on the projects we are engaged to deliver. This includes creating project and organisational structures for our clients which promote collective commercial and value alignment to serve a wider purpose. Moving to an EOT will support the further development of our people as we continue to nurture future leaders of the infrastructure sector.’
Amar Qureshi, Joint Managing Director and Co-Founder, said:
“We are also, of course, delighted to welcome James Stewart as our new Chair and Anne Tiedemann as our independent chair of Agilia’s Employee Owned Trust, and look forward to working with them to ensure Agilia remains focussed on delivering for our clients in accordance with our collective values.”
In the video below Amar sets out why we embarked on the journey to become an Employee Owned Trust and the ambitions we have for the business: