Irish firm wins €100m M25 deal

AN Irish-owned London based civil engineering company has won a €100 million contract to work on the M25 widening programme around Greater London, it emerged yesterday.

The McArdle Group, based in London but acquired by Cork-based equity firm Mercier Private Equity last year, has secured the lucrative three-year deal.

The group will undertake site clearance and earthworks covering about 60km, moving more than six million tonnes of soil and aggregates.

The project is the largest the group has ever worked on.

Previous schemes the company has been involved in include the redevelopment of the M1 and M25 motorways, the A3 Hindhead Tunnel and the T5 baggage handling tunnel at Heathrow.

Mercier Private Equity was established to focus on investment opportunities among mid-sized family owned businesses in Ireland and internationally. Its principals – Marcus Spillane and Martin Dooney – have backgrounds in corporate finance and financial services internationally.

Mr Spillane, the managing director, is a chartered accountant and worked with Deloitte in Cork and in the M&A Services group of the firm in New York. He has assisted a number of owner-managed and family-owned businesses with acquisitions, disposals and restructurings.

“Our backgrounds coming from, and working with family businesses give us a strong understanding and respect for this unique dynamic. We know that dealing proactively and positively with this dynamic can lead to significant value creation and growth to the benefit of both the family and the investor.

“We commit to only making investments in those family businesses that are open to the idea of having a partner provide outside capital and ideas to help unlock the tremendous intrinsic value often hidden in family businesses,” said Mr Spillane.

Mr Dooney is former managing director and global head of money markets at Barclays Capital, and was involved in wholesale capital markets for three decades.