Bidders for Kentz oil and gas firm walk away

An oil and gas engineering group is to keep its independence after fighting off takeover interest from British and German rivals.

Kentz Corporation, which employs 14,500 people in 30 countries, has been the subject of a £690m (€820m) bid approach from engineering giant Amec and a lower offer from Stuttgart-based M+W Group.

Kentz spans oil and gas, chemicals, mining and metals. It traces its roots back to 1919 as an electrical contractor in Tipperary, Ireland, and works on small to medium-sized projects from bases across the globe.

Having rejected both approaches last month, Kentz said today that M+W had followed London-based Amec in walking away from a possible offer for the FTSE 250 company.

The company is registered in Jersey but has no central headquarters, with its management spread across the world.

Recent big projects include electrical wiring on a giant gas platform in Australia and installing a telecoms network at an oil sands project in Canada.

Chief executive Christian Brown said: “While we have every confidence in our ability to deliver further value to our shareholders as an independent company, the board fully understands its responsibilities to all our shareholders.”

The company has pointed to its substantial order backlog, prospective bidding pipeline and robust balance sheet as reasons for rejecting the approaches.