黑洞社区

The bosses of Kier and Mouchel have said their takeover deal breaks the mould by combining heavyweight contracting and consulting expertise.

Contracting giant Kier to pay 拢265m for consultant Mouchel, creating a combined company with a 拢9.3bn order book and a leading market share in the UK highways sector.

Kier chief executive Haydn Mursell (pictured, left) told 黑洞社区 he was 鈥渧ery excited about getting consultancy into the Kier fold鈥�, while Mouchel chief executive Grant Rumbles (pictured, right) said they had struck a 鈥渄ifferent kind of deal鈥�.

Rumbles said: 鈥淎 lot of merger and acquisition activity has been about adding on more of the same [contracting to contracting, or consulting to consulting].

鈥淭he nice thing about this deal is Kier is adding in our asset advice and high level consulting and I think the market has been looking for that.鈥�

One of the few UK contractors to buy into consulting in recent years, Balfour Beatty, sold its consulting arm Parsons Brinckerhoff to WSP after just five years last November.

To finance the Mouchel transaction Kier will launch a 拢340m rights issue.

Kier and Mouchel said that once their road contracts were pooled together, the combined firm manages around a third of the UK鈥檚 road network.

Mursell confirmed one of the big attractions of the deal for Kier was acquiring a 鈥渟ector leading position in the highways market鈥�, including places on the Highways Agency鈥檚 valuable trunk road maintenance frameworks, as he revealed to 黑洞社区 in March.

Both Mursell and Rumbles insisted there would be 鈥渧ery few鈥� job losses as a result of the deal. Rumbles argued the deal was about 鈥渃reation of jobs, not job losses鈥�, with job losses restricted mainly to duplicated 鈥渃orporate functions鈥�, including 鈥渕y job, and my CFO鈥�.

Rumbles said he would step down when the transaction closed, but would be 鈥渁vailable to Haydn and the Kier team鈥� if help was needed after that on strategy.

The deal is the culmination of a remarkable turnaround in Mouchel鈥檚 fortunes over the past four years.

Mouchel was forced to delist from the London stock exchange, restructure and sell up to its banks in 2012 following a run of bad financial news the previous year, including an 拢8.5m blackhole uncovered in its accounts, which prompted the-then chief executive Richard Cuthbert to step down and make way for Grant Rumbles in October 2011.

Rumbles has led a transformation in the company鈥檚 fortunes, with the firm posting 拢16.5m pre-tax profit on 拢616.6m revenue in its latest financial results for the year to September 2014.

Rumbles said 鈥渋t was no secret鈥� Mouchel was considering its exit options last summer, including a potential re-listing on the stock exchange, but said he was 鈥渧ery very happy鈥� with the outcome of a sale to Kier.