Balfour Beatty sells Cutty Sark restorer for £42 million

Balfour Beatty is to offload the engineering management firm involved in the ill-fated restoration of the Cutty Sark in Greenwich in 2007.

The sale of US-based Heery to an arm of CBRE will raise £42 million for Balfour and remove a major constraint on its winning US contracts.

Balfour said perceived conflicts of interest with Heery’s work as a programme manager often meant it was precluded from bidding as a general contractor.

Balfour now hopes to partner with Heery on a wide range of potential projects.

Atlanta-based Heery was founded in 1952. Balfour bought 50% of the business in 1986 and full ownership in 1990.

In 2006, Heery won a £22 million contract to manage the restoration of the Cutty Sark tea clipper, but the project was hit by a serious fire in 2007.

The Heery sale comes a day after Balfour announced another big US deal — a £193 million contract to build more than two million square feet of retail and residential space in Miami. Shares were 1.9p lower at 266.5p.