Keith Clarke decided to take his family on a relaxing holiday to Greece in the middle of August. It was also the middle of the 鈥渟illy season鈥�, when the papers make up for the lack of news by running stories about how many people a year are injured by cotton wool. Unfortunately for the Kvaerner UK chief executive, it also happened to be the week that his Norwegian parent company decided to sell its UK subsidiary to Skanska.
Clarke, who is soon to become the boss of Skanska UK, spent the first week of his break in daily contact with his UK office. He then curtailed the second by flying back on bank holiday Monday and announcing the sale first thing Tuesday. Some silly season.
Apart from preventing Clarke from fully developing his tan, the Skanska takeover was the third large deal to be announced in a week. What would otherwise have been an important event for a single company was beginning to look as though it might be significant for the whole of UK contacting.
The merger of Try and Galliford on 22 August started the ball rolling. This was followed two days later by a real surprise 鈥� Morrison鈥檚 acquisition by Anglian Water. All three deals were different, but together they led commentators to suspect that the much talked about 鈥� but much delayed 鈥� consolidation within the construction industry was under way.
I wouldn鈥檛 be surprised if Galliford Try hoovers up quite a lot of well-known firms
Sector Analyst
What it certainly has done is increase both the profile and interest in the sector. In the weeks leading up to Skanska鈥檚 coup, sector analysts invented a virtual parlour game in which players competed to see just how many UK names could be linked with the giant Scandinavian company; Amec, Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Kvaerner and even Morrison were bandied about.
Now the deal has been done, Clarke is in ebullient form, de