M Group Services is taking over the highway maintenance and street lighting business contract from Skanska. This £50m acquisition is an exchange over the Skanska contracts that took place as the sale back in December 2020.
The works including highways maintenance, street lighting activities, and rail maintenance helped Skanska generate £334m in revenue from the business in 2020. M Group Services is taking over an order book worth £541m.
Skanska reckons that it would book a net gain of £31m on the £50m transaction. A new operating business called Milestone Infrastructure Ltd, following completion of the acquisition has been formed.
Milestone operates as a standalone business delivering highways maintenance, street lighting and projects through existing relationships with local authority clients including Somerset, Devon, North Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Peterborough, Surrey, Croydon, Redbridge, Lewisham, and Cambridgeshire councils.
The acquisition of Skanska UK’s Infrastructure Services operation signals the continued growth of M Group Services, it said. The private equity backed business, previously called Morrison Utility Services, has made 12 acquisitions in the past five years.