Marconi bought two homes from ex-director

Marconi was yesterday forced to admit it had bought a second house for £1.7m from a former senior executive that it later sold at a £200,000 loss.

The telecoms equipment maker is still trying to sell the £1.6m Buckinghamshire house it also bought from Charlie Foreman, a former senior sales executive who was previously the company's director of communications.

Marconi is believed to be mulling a £1.35m offer for that six-bedroom country mansion, set in 1.6 acres, that it bought in February.

If it accepts the offer, it will lose £250,000, boosting its total losses on the two houses it bought from Mr Foreman to £450,000. After stamp duty and legal fees, however, the losses are more like £750,000.

Marconi had agreed to buy Mr Foreman's house in Wandsworth, south-west London, in June of last year as part of a relocation package after he had agreed to take on a sales role in Coventry. The London town house, overlooking the western side of Wandsworth Common, was eventually sold in January of this year for £1.5m.

Marconi then went on to buy the second house, in a village near the Buckinghamshire/Northamptonshire border, from Mr Foreman just a month after selling the first.

That purchase, however, was part of Mr Foreman's redundancy package. He was made redundant last November, having apparently been assured that his job was safe before he relocated from London.