GDF Suez buys Balfour Beatty’s WorkPlace unit

The French will now be running facilities at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London after Balfour Beatty today sold its UK facilities management business to GDF Suez for £190 million.

The French giant looks to have got a cheap deal as the WorkPlace business had been expected to be valued at about £250 million.

The division’s other main customers include the taxman, nine major hospitals, 200 schools, 500 government buildings and eight nuclear power plans — and the sale price is just £7 million short of Balfour’s valuation of the unit’s gross assets last December.

But Andrew McNaughton, chief executive of Balfour, said the sale was “an important step in our evolution as we intensify our focus on infrastructure.”