Balfour Beatty plans to bid for five of the 10 major private finance initiative hospitals and all four roads in the next round of PFI contracts.
The hospitals include the £250m Royal London, the £220m Walsgrave in Coventry and a £177m scheme in Derby.
The firm revealed its plans at a presentation to help the City put a price on its PFI equity portfolio. The firm puts the construction cost of its PFI work at £750m.
Kevin Cammack, analyst at Merrill Lynch, said of the level of Balfour’s bidding: “It sounded quite high. Either it expects its hit rate to decline or it wants to get into as many as possible,” he said.
Balfour also told analysts that it expected to obtain a return of between 1.5 and three times on its £54m of equity stakes.
Chief executive Mike Welton said the group was considering corporate PFI work and selling its expertise abroad. He said: “The PFI process is very interesting to other countries. And it would be useful to us, should we see fit, to move into them.”
