M&A

Some big-name contractors have gone under in recent years without following proper redundancy procedures. With taxpayers footing the bill for payouts, is there any incentive for failing businesses to play fair? David Prosser reports Labour. Raw materials. Interest rates. As these costs all soar, the mortal threat to many construction…

This year’s index shows a healthy picture for the ground engineering sector, largely underpinned by the ramping-up of HS2. A strong bounceback from last year’s COVID-blighted index saw turnover fall at just three firms, while profit was up at all eight of the contractors that have published new accounts since…

Steel specialists have seen their profit margins squeezed as unprecedented inflation and COVID-19 have challenged their bottom lines. Pre-tax profit dropped in four of the top 10 firms with William Hare reporting the only loss – £3.6m at the end of last year – compared with its £1.4m profit for…

Most specialist contractors have seen an improvement in their fortunes as the industry has moved on from the pandemic, but the picture may be about to worsen Things were getting better for the UK’s top specialists before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 2022 Construction News Specialists Index reveals. Emerging from…

The average margin in the M&E sector has improved slightly in this year’s index, but is still among the smallest of the seven specialist categories. “[While] there has been a huge amount of change in the industry, I think the companies that have succeeded are those that were able to…

Scaffolding firms have rebounded from the pandemic-driven downturn with rises in revenue and profit. The sector had the highest median average pre-tax margin of any of the seven specialisms in the CN Specialists Index 2022, at 6.6 per cent. This was up a remarkable 4.9 percentage points on 2021’s 1.8…

Uncertainty hangs over the future of the envelope sector, where the median average margin is 4.3 percentage points lower than it was in 2018. The top 10 firms in the specialism – under intense scrutiny since the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017 – posted a median margin of 1.6 per…

Concrete became the specialism with the lowest margins across the seven index categories, having boasted the second-highest in the 2021 edition. The median average margin for the top specialists tumbled from 3.7 per cent to just 1.15 per cent in this year’s index, in what has been a tough year…

Fortunes were mixed for demolition specialists in this year’s index, while an admission of historical bid rigging hit a number of the sector’s big names. Aggregate turnover was relatively flat year-on-year, although seven of the top 10 contractors reported a rise. Pre-tax profit grew slightly to a cumulative £19.8m. Keltbray…

The cost of steel rose so steeply this year that even some of the biggest project managers in the country were beginning to feel the heat. Prices, which had been largely stable at around £350 per tonne, were suddenly hitting levels of between £500 and £700, and even more. The…