The Vikings have arrived

Swedish contractor Skanska has leapfrogged Vinci, Bouygues and Hochtief and landed at the top of the 2002 European contractors league table. Like their Viking forebears, the ambitious Swedes went on the acquisition trail around Europe and beyond, and the resulting increase in turnover made them the biggest on the Continent – although not the most profitable.

A Skanska spokesperson says: “Being the largest in Europe is not a goal in itself, but it’s a good sign that our strategy is working. Our goal is to be among the top contractors in volume and profitability.” It is still only halfway there – with a profit of only *10m on *17.8bn turnover (£6.1m on £10.9bn), its profit margin is microscopic. Vinci has a margin about eight times higher.

Many of the firms at the top of the table are not just European players, but global ones. Bouygues has operations in 80 countries in Africa, Asia, eastern Europe and Australasia. Skanska has subsidiaries in the Americas, China, and throughout Europe – 82% of Skanska’s turnover came from outside Sweden this year, compared with 72% last year. Among the British contingent, Carillion and Taylor Woodrow were two firms that significantly increased the importance of their foreign turnover this year.

So, the biggest firms are gradually going global. They don’t have much choice – apart from governments, their biggest clients are multinationals that like to work with the same contractor in different countries.

The other big mover this year was HBG Dragados, which rose from 10th to fifth after Dragados, a Spanish industrial group, bought Dutch construction firm HBG for *756m (£460m) in April 2002. But Dragados’ rise will be short-lived – it sold HBG for *715m (£436m) in November, so it won’t have the benefit of the Dutch contractor’s turnover in next year’s chart.

The table contains the final appearance of German firm Philipp Holzmann, which went bust in 2002. Mike Betts, a construction analyst at JP Morgan, says: “Holzmann’s fall has a lot of lessons for companies that get their strategy wrong. First, it overexpanded way too aggressively in property development at the top of the cycle and paid the price at the bottom. Second, it didn’t control its cash flow well enough.”

Betts says Skanska has also pursued an aggressive line in property development, as well as acquiring contractors in Norway, Poland and the Czech Republic. But he adds that a more cautious approach will emerge under Stuart Graham. Graham took over as chief executive last autumn on the strength of the performance of Skanska’s US division, which has become the second largest contractor in the USA. Betts says: “Two years ago, Skanska expanded very fast by acquisition, but I get the impression Stuart Graham is trying to make them think about things a bit more now.”