Financial

Billington made a pre-tax profit of £5.8m in 2022 and secured revenue of £86.6m. The structural steel contractor saw its revenue increase by 4.7 per cent, from £82.7m in 2021. Its pre-tax profit, meanwhile, rose by 346 per cent, having been £1.3m in the previous year. This equated to a…

Former Wates chief executive David Allen was paid £992,000 in “compensation for loss of office”, Construction News can reveal. Allen joined Wates as chief financial officer in 2016, before stepping up to chief executive in 2018. He departed suddenly last summer, leaving Philip Wainwright to head the company as interim…

A contractor that turned over £40m five years ago has made an application for administration, while one of its sister companies has entered liquidation. Construction News revealed in February that Henley Construct, a residential builder headquartered in Battersea, south-west London, had placed most of its staff on unpaid leave citing…

Downing Construction has announced a pre-tax loss of £8.5m, as it attempts to recoup money paid to a client for defective cladding. The Liverpool-based firm also revealed it suffered a 65 per cent fall in turnover, from £83.4m to £28.8m, in its latest financial year, which ended in March 2022.…

Lendlease’s Europe division made a pre-tax loss of £230m in the year to 30 June 2022, its latest accounts reveal. This includes £114m set aside for remediation work on unsafe buildings, which the company announced in its financial figures for the second half of 2022 to finance action required by…

Hundreds of construction workers in Scotland are to strike after Unite members backed industrial action. From 17 April to 10 July, 100 Kaefer Limited workers at the Rosyth Dockyard are set to take 12 weeks of all-out strike action. Unite says the action will “directly threaten” progress on a contract…

Torsion Group has secured four major projects totalling £114m in the residential and student housing market. The Leeds-based construction company's first ever residential build will be in Manchester and is worth £25.9m. Other new schemes include a £46m residential development in Birmingham for Select Property; a £10.2m student accommodation scheme…

GMI Construction’s turnover has tripled to £360m after what it described as a “buoyant year”, although this was offset by a £2.2m pre-tax loss in the year to 30 September 2022. GMI attributed the turnover increase to its expansion into new locations such as the North East of England and…

Keith Cooper asks how scaffolding specialists have managed to protect their profits, despite the headwinds of recent years From the outside, scaffolding firms seem as susceptible as any other construction specialist to the many challenges of recent years. The pandemic, huge hikes in the cost of materials and the chronic…

Affordable-homes builder Lane End Developments Construction has entered administration. Last month the Warrington-based company revealed it was in talks with a buyer over a potential takeover, adding that it was “entering the final stages of negotiations and due diligence to secure a successful share purchase”. But the firm, which had…