Europe

Scottish oil services giant Wood Group has announced it is to take over rival PSN in a £600 million deal.

The merger of the two Aberdeen-based firms will create the UK’s biggest oil services company. It will also be Wood’s largest acquisition to date.

PSN, an international energy services company, will merge with Wood’s Production Facilities business to create the brownfield production services provider, Wood Group PSN.

Balfour Beatty, the UK-based market leading infrastructure specialist, has won a five-year rail renewal contract on the London Underground system.

The contract is to carry out track renewal work, which will include the replacement of ballasted track, points and crossings, including all ancillary signalling and drainage works on the Tube network.

The total value of the work to be carried out by the partnership is £220 million, of which around half will be Balfour Beatty's share.

Steinhoff International Holdings is in exclusive talks with France’s PPR to buy its Conforama furniture business for a cash sum of €1.2 billion.

PPR is selling Marne-La-Vallée, France-based Conforama to focus on its Gucci Group luxury goods and Puma sporting goods divisions. The Paris-based company is also planning to sell the Fnac music chain and the mail-order retailer Redcats.

BP has approached a number of UK-focused energy companies about a potential sell-off of its North Sea assets, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

It is understood that the energy giant has met with utilities and oil companies to gauge their interest in the non-core fields, which are collectively worth around $1 billion.

BP is thought to have approached the organisations on a ‘pre-tender’ basis—ahead of any official auction—to gauge the level of interest.

Even the largest names in pharmaceuticals need some help from their friends from time to time, as Alan Swaby learns in discussion with Penn Pharma.

A career in pharmaceutical R&D is not for those with a short attention span. Perhaps growing bonsai needs more patience; but the painstaking search for new drugs can’t be far behind. Even when an exciting breakthrough is made in the form of a promising new molecule, the hard grind has barely begun.

Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto has made a A$3.5 billion bid approach for Africa-focused Riversdale Mining, in a move likely to spark a bidding war.

Premier Foods has today responded to speculation about a bid by the Swiss consumer goods giant Nestlé to buy its meat-free range, Quorn.

Nestlé is said to have submitted an offer for Quorn via it its subsidiary Osem Group, the majority-owned Israel-based Nestlé venture that specialises in ethnic foods.

Johnson Controls, a major US-based supplier of automotive seating systems, interior components and electronics, has signed a purchase agreement to acquire the C. Rob. Hammerstein Group (CRH).

CRH is a global supplier of metal seat structures and mechanisms and is recognized for its high level of quality. CRH's headquarters and main development facilities are based in Solingen, Germany.

France’s Technip has won a major contract from Algeria’s national oil company Sonatrach to refurbish and revamp its Algiers refinery.

The lump sum turnkey contract, which is worth around 67.9 billion Algerian dinars (approximately €690 million) will last 38 months and cover the execution of the complete scope of works, including the design, supply of equipment and bulk material, construction and start-up.

Royal Dutch Shell and Russia's Gazprom have signed a co-operation agreement that will see them exploring for more oil together in western Siberia and the far east of Russia.

As part of the deal, Shell has agreed to let Gazprom share some of its overseas projects in return for Shell being allowed to develop the third and fourth stages of the Sakhalin project in Sakhalin Island, Russia. Sakhalin 3 alone contains 1.4 trillion cubic metres of gas.