S African builder Murray & Roberts to quit Middle East

Murray & Roberts, a leading South Africa-based construction, engineering and mining contractor, is set to quit its Middle East operations after failing to sell them during its disposal of infrastructure and building business, said a report. But the shutdown of those operations is expected to affect the construction firm’s full-year results negatively, reported Business Day. The company sold the infrastructure and building business to a consortium led by the Southern Palace Group for R314 million ($23 million) in 2016. However, the Middle East operations were not included as the buyer was not interested in them, stated the report. In a trading statement released on Monday, Murray & Roberts revealed that the board had decided that the most prudent action would be to walk away from the business in the Middle East once all construction activity had been completed at the end of the 2017 financial year. Closure of this business is very costly mainly due to increased cost associated with the remaining construction work on the last four projects, as well as an unfavourable arbitration ruling on a subcontractor claim on a project which was completed in 2011, the statement said. As a result, the group warned that headline earnings per share for the year to June 2017 would drop more than 20 per cent,