Carillion’s collapse gives Balfour Beatty a leg up
British construction group says it won more business following bankruptcy of low-price bidder as it reports a nearly 10% jump in full-year profit
British construction group Balfour Beatty said on Wednesday it won more business following the collapse of Carillion as it reported a nearly 10% jump in full-year profit. The bankruptcy of Carillion in January 2018 was seen as a watershed for Britain’s construction sector that ended a race to the bottom in terms of pricing of bids for public sector work. “We have benefited in our order book from Carillion’s collapse but that’s a function of us being a higher-quality company and the low-price bidder not being there in the market anymore,” said CEO Leo Quinn. Shares of Balfour Beatty rose nearly 3% to 293.1p in early-morning trading, outshining the broader midcap index. “Leo Quinn has successfully proven that revenue is vanity and profits are sanity,” said George Salmon, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. But he added that the downfall of Carillion is a constant reminder of how little room for error there is in the industry. That point is underlined by the plight of support servic...
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