IT was the £2.2 billion takeover that nearly didn’t happen — because the lights went out.

Mark Clare, the new boss of Barratt Developments, was standing in his Brent-ford office when Charles Packshaw, the HSBC banker and adviser to Wilson Bowden, called to deliver the good news. Barratt was in prime position to win the battle to buy its rival — but Wilson Bowden needed assurances of the speed with which the deal could be completed. In essence, Wilson Bowden wanted the transaction to be announced four days later.

It was 9.30am on Thursday morning and Clare was still talking into his mobile phone when there was a power cut. Trapped in an office with no e-mail, no fax, no photocopier and no lights, Clare jumped into his black Audi A8 and sped to the Liverpool Street offices of his advisers at UBS. They worked on the deal during Thursday and Friday and nonstop through the weekend. And, right on the deadline of Monday morning, a relieved Clare announced to the stock exchange the biggest housebuilding takeover in Britain.

The company had beaten arch-rival Wimpey and a consortium comprising Sir Tom Hunter, the Scottish entrepreneur, and HBOS. It was a prize worth winning. Barratt will be propelled into the FTSE 100 and will regain its status as Britain’s biggest builder.

“It was all quite surreal,” said Clare, recalling the events of that chaotic Thursday as he sat in the calmer surroundings of Browns Hotel in Mayfair last week. Clare, 49, will go down in history as the man who broke with tradition and completed Barratt’s first takeover for 20 years. The Wilson Bowden acquisition may also create a new model for housebuilding takeovers because the deal is predicated on expanding the brand rather than on making cutbacks.

“It’s a well-run company with good people and unique assets,” Clare said. One of its attractions is its commercial division. Until now, on large mixed-use building schemes Barratt has had to hand over the commercial element to another developer. The opportunity to acquire Wilson Bowden was “as good a fit as we were going to get,” said Clare. About £1.5 billion will be invested in buying new land for the existing Barratt business and David Wilson homes, the upmarket brand used by Wilson Bowden.

The takeover is a remarkable achievement for a man who has been in the job for just over four months and has visited only 70 of the company’s 460 development sites. Clare’s mild, easy-going manner belies the aggression and determination that he must have to pull off such a deal.

But when I meet him he puts on a good impression of being Mr Ordinary. He hails from the sleepy harbour town of Emsworth, near Portsmouth. He attended grammar school but decided to forgo university to train as an accountant. These days he lives in Hertfordshire and is married with three children. Holidays are often taken at a second home in Spain, interspersed with more exotic destinations like South Africa. As for his hobbies, he admits to nothing more exciting than an occasional game of badminton or tennis, listening to Snow Patrol on his iPod and a trip this weekend to Center Parcs with the kids.

Most of his energy goes into his work. He was a nonexecutive director at BAA, the airport operator during its takeover by Ferrovial, the Spanish infrastructure giant. Clare did stints at GEC Marconi and Nortel, and then spent 12 years with British Gas before he was headhunted for the Barratt job. Working for a volume housebuilder had not really occurred to him but he liked the company and was impressed by its positive attitude, the pride of its employees and its willingness to change.

Barratt was one of the biggest players in the sector, but all the headlines were being grabbed by a rival, Persimmon, which had swallowed up a number of smaller companies and overtaken Barratt.

“My first impression of Barratt was that it had a strong culture, a strong profit-and- loss account and there were very good people in the organisation, but strategically it hadn’t focused as much as it should have on sales, marketing, human resources, public affairs and zero-carbon. It really didn’t have those functions in place,” said Clare.

“It was a case of A-minus for operational excellence, but strategically B-minus.”

Like a lot of people, his perception of the company was limited to it being one that “builds middle-value homes in quantity”.

“What I found was a company that had won a lot of awards, was very proud of its people, was passionate about what it was doing and built very diverse schemes from big towers in London to urban regeneration schemes. I also found it to havea very supportive and strong culture and that it was easy to get the company to do things and change very fast.”

Change is already under way. Clare has hired a new human resources director and a new sales director. A new head of corporate communications has arrived from Centrica. Clare wants to change the way the company recruits; more graduate train- ees will be hired, which is cheaper than poaching staff from rivals.

The meat of Clare’s strategy is still being formulated. He simply said he wants to lead the industry in service, quality, range, affordability and on environmental issues like building zero-carbon homes.

But being number one is not a bad place to start.

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