Balfour Beatty’s annus horribilis worsened last night after it emerged that the findings of an internal investigation will not be known until the new year and that a rebuffed bidder for a large chunk of the group was not taking “no” for an answer.
Balfour was the talk of the City as investors wondered whether John Laing Infrastructure Fund, a company bidding to take control of Balfour’s portfolio of public-private partnership investments, might team up with a construction company to launch a full-blown takeover bid for the group.
Shares in Balfour closed at their highest in ten weeks, 11p better at 195½p.
As expected, Britain’s biggest construction company rejected what had been seen as an opportunistic £1 billion bid for its PPP portfolio from JLIF,