Our Group comprises two distinct businesses. We are a substantial and growing infrastructure investment specialist and we are the UK’s largest international engineering, construction and services contractor. These businesses, leaders in their own fields, add significant value to each other. They generate what the other needs and work together as a coherent force where the customer benefits as a result.

Our contracting business is a leader across a wide range of construction and related disciplines in the UK and in selected overseas markets. It has long-term relationships with a wide range of blue-chip customers and is highly cash generative. Its order book, standing at some £9.1bn at the year-end, creates excellent forward earnings visibility. Cash flows from operating activities over the last three years have totalled more than £532m and fully match profits.

Our engineering, construction and services businesses generate the cash that Balfour Beatty Capital needs to pursue its ambitious domestic and international growth aspirations.

Our investment business, Balfour Beatty Capital, is also a leader. It creates major construction and long-term service opportunities for our contracting operations. It owns and operates 21 infrastructure projects and is preferred bidder for a further six concessions. These include road schemes, hospitals, schools, an airport, power projects and other infrastructure projects. It has committed some £341m of equity in these projects and has a strong bid pipeline. Its concessions generate stable, long-term profits.

The seamless delivery of debt and equity finance, design, construction, building services, and long-term management and maintenance is an increasingly attractive option for infrastructure procurement. This is true, not just in the UK but also increasingly in markets overseas in which Balfour Beatty has a major contracting presence – the US, Germany and Singapore, for example.