Dive Brief:
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When the Ryland Group/Standard Pacific Corp. merger is complete this fall, the resulting company will have a new name: CalAtlantic Group.
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Standard Pacific President and CEO Scott Stowell called the choosing of a name for what will become the fourth-largest U.S. homebuilder “a defining moment” for the combined organization. Ryland’s top official, Larry Nicholson, said it “reflects a new chapter of our two iconic homebuilding companies” and “points to the breadth of the new company’s footprint expanding from coast to coast and all points in between.”
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Ryland’s stand-alone firm operates in 17 states, while Standard Pacific builds in seven.
Dive Insight:
When the two California-based public homebuilding giants announced their mega-merger in June, their competitors, the construction media and Wall Street speculated that the consolidation would be the first of many involving large builders.
Sure enough, by late July, Taylor Morrison, the seventh-largest U.S. homebuilder by volume of sales, acquired the Chicago, Charlotte, NC, and Raleigh, NC, portfolios of 64th-ranked Orleans Homebuilders in a $166 million deal.
Even Stowell told The Wall Street Journal he expected what the two builders called “a merger of equals” to lead to others. “The time is now for this to happen,” he said of the deal with Ryland.
The last consolidation of two large, publicly traded builders involved Pulte and Centex, which made Centex a wholly owned subsidiary of the third-largest U.S. builder.
