LOOK out of the train window and what do you see? Ballast, running up and down rail tracks across Britain.

“Yup, we supply a lot of that,” says Peter Tom, chief executive of Aggregate Industries. And asphalt for roads and ready-mixed concrete for construction. His firm, started from one site near Leicester 50-odd years ago, is now a quarrying and building materials giant with sales of £1.5 billion and operations all over Britain and America.

And Cornish-born Tom, a charismatic figure who has headed the firm since before it floated on the full market as Bardon in 1988, is one of the longest-serving bosses around. But this year it will be his 65th birthday and he may have to face some hard choices.

The sectors where Aggregate Industries competes, dominated by global leviathans such as Lafarge and Cemex, are consolidating fast. Many believe Tom’s firm — medium-sized compared with the titans — could be a takeover target. If not, the issue of succession comes to the fore. Tom has been on top for so long, can he ever let go? He shrugs. “At the end of the day this company is owned by the shareholders. From a strategy point of view, if we keep performing well...”

He leaves the rest unsaid. Those who know Tom say he is a sticker. For decades he has kept the same advisers, same friends, same rugby club — Leicester Tigers, where he played in the 1960s and where as chairman for the past 12 years he has seen extraordinary success. Only the wives change. Tom has been married four times, and at 64, has just remarried and become a father again.

But others contend he will, eventually, have to walk away from his business. And is he bothered by the speculation? Not a jot. Tom, a 6ft 4in broken-nosed bear of a man, with a cheeky grin and snowy hair, is more agitated that he may say something in this interview that could get him into trouble later.

“My lawyer told me not to do this,” he says. “I said ‘I’ll just be honest’ and he said, ‘That’s what I’m worried about’.”

Tom cracks up at that one. Perching his sizable bulk in a wide leather chair behind the polished dining room table that he works on at Aggregate Industries’ country house base, he looks crumpled but scrubbed, like a prop forward freshly dressed after a rugby club shower.

In the room next door, two glamorous female assistants busy themselves at their desks. Behind him, French windows frame a landscape of oak trees and Leicestershire meadows rolling off to the horizon, part of the company’s Bardon Hill estate and quarry. Round here, Tom is lord of all he surveys.

And he has every reason to be in a good mood right now: he has a new son, Leicester Tigers are running away with the Zurich Premiership, and Aggregate Industries’ shares hit a 13-year high last week. The firm is expected to post an eighth successive year of record profits soon, with revenue up to £1.6 billion for 2004. What more could a man want? “If you get the asset base right,” nods Tom, “this business will produce very solid returns continuously over time.”

In a sector held hostage by construction trends and the weather, big projects help too. The M25 widening scheme, the new Wembley stadium, Heathrow’s Terminal 5 — Aggregate Industries supplies them all. That success has been developed by Tom with relentless drive. “We are an awkward competitor for anyone,” he says, pointing to Aggregate Industries’ late entry into the London ready-mixed concrete market six years ago. His firm now has 20% of that market.

He likes to spot opportunities, and describes his business as “very much a niche producer of materials”.

Even so, he has grown it rapidly over the past 17 years, moving into America in 1988, merging with Evered in 1991, and with Camas in 1997, changing the name to Aggregate Industries. He now draws a £1m wage package, but advisers say he mixes obvious charisma with a surprising lack of ego.

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