2018 has been a pretty major year for the transport and infrastructure industries. We’ve seen advances (and delays) with HS2, Crossrail and the Heathrow third runway. There’s been massive investment in the UK highways sectors as well as countless other major programmes up and down the country.
While you may be familiar with our monthly mover and shakers roundup, we thought we would mix things up a bit, as another year draws to a close, and take a look at which companies made some big changes in 2018…
Mergers, Acquisitions & Collapses
Carillion
January 2018 saw the demise of the UK’s second-largest construction company, collapsing under the weight of a £1.5bn debt.
Murphy Group
Following Carillion’s collapse, Murphy bought Carillion’s UK power business for an undisclosed fee. As part of the deal, all Carillion employees moved over to Murphy to add design and installation capabilities to the firm’s power business.
SPL Powerlines UK
Powerlines acquired Carillion’s 50% shareholding in their Carillion Powerlines JV to deliver electrification programmes on behalf on Network Rail and transferred Carillion’s employees to its UK subsidiary, SPL Powerlines UK.
Egis Group
French engineering group Egis took on Carillion’s 30-year contract to maintain part of the M40 motorway.
Stantec
Canadian based consultant Stantec completed an acquisition of UK consultant Peter Brett Associates LLP.
The consultant has also announced the sale of its construction division, MWH Constructors, to Oaktree Capital Management. MWH Constructors joined Stantec through the MWH acquisition in 2016, and was formerly the Biwater Treatment business.
Ferrovial
Spanish contracting giant Ferrovial announced it is putting its global support services division, which includes Amey, up for sale.
Morrisroe Group
Groundworks specialist Morrisroe Group is in talks to buy Skanska’s foundations business Cementation.
Kier
Sold its Australian road maintenance business for around £24m in order to reduce its debt.
Vp plc
Plant and tool hire group Vp bought Brandon Hire Group and its subsidiaries from its venture capital owners in a deal worth nearly £70m.
Balfour Beatty
Balfour Beatty sold an additional 5% of its stake in M25 Connect Plus business for £42m.
London Luton Airport
AMP Capital announced in April that it had acquired 49% of London Luton Airport from Ardian.
Go North East
The Go-Ahead Group subsidiary acquired East Yorkshire Motor Services, Britain’s largest family-owned bus company, for an undisclosed sum in June.
Siemens
Siemens purchased Spanish-based transport modelling firm Aimsun for an undisclosed sum, in a bid to become a fully integrated provider of intermodal door-to-door travel solutions.
Siemens & Alstom
Siemens and Alstom are still confident that their merger will take place in the first half of 2019, despite objections from competition watchdogs.
Forrest
Contractor Forrest has entered administration despite the sale of its refurbishment and energy divisions to Engie Regeneration.
WSP
WSP announced in July, the $400m acquisition of US consultancy giant Louis Berger, adding 5,000 people to WSP’s workforce.
Renew Holdings
In May, Engineering services group Renew Holdings acquired Scottish railway contractor QTS in a deal worth £80m. Renew boosts its presence in the rail sector where its AMCO subsidary was one of Network Rail’s largest suppliers last year.
Breedon
Construction giant Breedon acquired Lagan Group in a deal worth £455m back in April. The combination of Breedon and Lagan’s materials interests were forecast to create a workforce of 3,000 and turnover of more than £900 million.
Tarmac
Tarmac bought £160m turnover regional civil engineering contractor Alun Griffiths in January. The respected civil engineering firm continues to operate under the Griffiths name.
Aspin Group
Private equity firm Sandton Capital Partners bought ground engineering specialist Aspin Group in March and aims to grow the £40m turnover business by 50% by 2020.
Arjun Infrastructure Partners
Purchased 75% equity stake in South Staffordshire Plc from KKR in April.
Aggreko
Temporary power provider Aggreko acquired a 14% share of Origami Energy, an intelligent software platform developer that optimises revenue earning capacity of grid connected generation and storage assets.
Ancala Partners
Infrastructure investment manager Ancala Partners purchased South Downs Capital, the parent company of Portsmouth Water in March.
Laing O’Rourke
Sold its Australian rail sleeper business in a deal worth AUS$50.5m (£29m) in August.
Rebrands
LNER
DfT took over Virgin Trains East Coast under new London North Eastern Railway brand.
Flowbird
The transport technology company, Parkeon, rebranded as Flowbird Group.
nmcn
North Midland Construction group changed its name from NM Group to nmcn. nmcn will be the single brand for all the group companies, including Nomenca.
Steer
Transport Consultants Steer Davies Gleave are now known as Steer Group.
SNC-Lavalin ATKINS
SNC-Lavalin and Atkins rebranded as SNC-Lavalin ATKINS following SNC-Lavalin’s acquisition of Atkins in 2017.
Transport for Wales (TfW)
The Wales and Borders rail service, formerly Arriva Trains Wales was returned to the Welsh government and rebranded as Transport for Wales Trafnidiaeth Cymru.
There has been a lot of activity within transport and infrastructure throughout 2018 and with January just around the corner, many of our clients are looking out how they want to structure their executive teams for the year to come.
If you are looking to make any changes in 2019, click HERE to see how we can help.
