Eric Neal retired as Boral's chief executive in June 1987 after thirty-seven years' service and fourteen years as chief executive and managing director. He remained on the board until April 1992. In the year Neal retired the operating profit was $178.1 million, compared with $12.6 million in 1973, a rise of 141.3 per cent - an unbroken sequence of higher profits. Tony Berg, Boral's managing director in 1996 commented, 'Neal was a great leader of Boral. Looking over the fifty-year history Boral's position today can largely be credited to Neal and what he achieved during his fourteen years as managing director. He made acquisitions which were fundamental to Boral's present position and strength in the building materials market in Australia. His management style was also a crucial factor - he left the company lean and aggressive with a no-nonsense approach to the business - which held Boral in very good stead for the future.'         Bruce Kean was appointed to succeed him as chief executive and joined the board. Kean had joined Norman J. Hurll a few months after Boral acquired a 50 per cent interest in 1968. A chemical engineer by training, he started off as marketing manager for gas and oil-fired burners and mechanical business. Kean followed the classic Neal scenario - he worked his way through the company and took over the management of Boral's Brick Group. Kean then succeeded Neal as chief general manager, Boral Gas Group, when Neal became chief executive of Boral Limited. There was no sector of Boral that Kean had not actively managed except resources - concrete and quarries - and in 1987 he was invited to become managing director. Kean had a strong philosophy inherited from Neal that a general manager was exactly that - a manager of the business generally. His view was that the job involved hiring and firing, accounting, maintenance, recommending new capital equipment, marketing, cash flows, meeting customers and collecting debts. Boral's general managers were totally responsible for every aspect of their business. Kean recognised that a lot of Boral's financial control systems could be traced back to the company's original business of marketing bitumen. Kean comments, 'In those early days, Boral was making a product which was produced out of a high capital cost plant that couldn't be stopped. Refined products couldn't be stored for an extended period of time.' Boral's business was built on cash flows, aggressive marketing of its products and a central control system. When Neal took over from Griffin, Boral was still buying up companies to soak up the by-products of the refinery. For example, when Boral went into the gas industry, management was looking for a way to capture the market for LPG and naphtha gas that came off the Matraville refinery. Boral also got into road making to use the bitumen, and the company bought into bricks to utilise the refinery's heavy distillates. Kean said, 'Businesses were acquired to provide a market for the by-products of the refinery. This was vertical integration in its classic phase.' When Griffin decided to sell the refinery, he was left with all these varied businesses. Kean says of this event, 'All the subsidiaries were suddenly left without a "father" or "mother" - they were orphans unrelated to each other.' The challenge for Neal and the Boral board was to form a matrix that made these businesses viable. Kean said, 'From the quarry, fine aggregates went into roof tiles, medium aggregates went into concrete blocks and coarse aggregates went into road making. Quarry products were all tied together with bitumen. Concrete took Boral into reinforcing steel. Bricks matched up with roof tiles and these products, together with masonry and aluminium windows and doors meant the company was now supplying the full external cladding for houses. Boral then went into gypsum board -- internal linings -- building up a family of integrated products, defining their markets as house building, construction and the associated infrastructure.' By the time Kean took over from Neal, Boral's role had been totally redefined to incorporate building and construction materials supply, building services, building maintenance, gas and other manufacturing.   Bruce Kean.     In September 1987, Boral announced a new issue of approximately 55.4 million ordinary shares to existing shareholders on the basis of one share for every ten shares or notes held. The issue was intended to raise approximately $277 million to finance a number of expansions, both in Australia and overseas, relating to the Group's core businesses. This issue had not closed, however, before the share market crash in October 1987, and overnight the price became unattractive to shareholders. At the Annual General Meeting on 9 November 1987 Peter Finley, Boral's chairman, announced that the issue would have to be abandoned and shareholders who had applied for shares were free to request a refund.   Parliament House in Canberra features a forest of marble columns and marble stairway supplied and fixed by Boral's Melocco Pty. Ltd.         »»