Last week Balfour Beatty had cause for celebration when its share price rose 5% to 167.5p on the back of a £175m road management and maintenance contract, awarded by the Highways Agency.
However, this did not make it immune to the general gloom. A report in Monday's Times claiming that the top five PFI contractors had hived off nearly £2bn of debts between them in special purpose vehicles (see above) wiped 14p off its shares. And the other four PFI giants suffered too: Jarvis shares fell 13p to 275p; Laing dropped 1p to 135p; Amec lost 0.5p, taking its shares to 174.75p; and Amey slipped 2p to a meagre 26.75p.
For Amey it was just the latest slide on a slippery slope. Last week its shares fell 7.3%. This was fuelled either by the fact that its second largest shareholder, Meditor Capital Management, sold 5.8 million shares, or by confirmation that it is to cut 350 more jobs. Either way, Amey is not on many investors' shopping lists.
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