Carillion faces staff exodus after McAlpine takeover

Carillion is likely to lose senior Alfred McAlpine staff after its £554m takeover of the firm this week.

One source at the support services firm told Building magazine that 40-50 senior staff intended to leave, despite John McDonough, Carillion's chief executive, saying he wanted as many staff from McAlpine to stay as possible.

The source said the staff were angry because they had not been kept adequately informed during the takeover process, with many wary that the takeover would mirror Carillion's 2006 acquisition of Mowlem, which saw 300 staff jump ship, forcing Carillion to take a £90m write-down.

Speaking to Building, McDonough admitted that McAlpine's four executive directors - CEO Ian Grice, finance director Richard Adam, MD Matt Swan and company secretary Chris Lea - would all leave. 'Fallout is inevitable,' he said. 'But we're talking about handfuls of people at a senior level. Most people in middle management and workers will be unaffected.' Although the precise number of redundancies had not been finalised, McDonough said there are expected to be 'relatively few, not hundreds and hundreds.'

But Contract Journal (CJ) has confirmed that 400 McAlpine staff involved in a joint venture are already set to move to defence contractor Babcock.

It said 150 of McAlpine's staff working on the £500m Eastern region prime contract will move to Babcock next week. And a further 240 staff working on the £500m South West region prime contract - run by Babcock and Bovis Lend Lease under the Debut Services consortium, where McAlpine is the key service provider - are also rumoured to make the switch in April.

CJ said Babcock is thought to be reluctant to work alongside Carillion and has instead opted to exercise a clause in its contract that lets it break off its deal with McAlpine in the event of a takeover and assume control of its staff.