Bilfinger SE (previously named Bilfinger Berger AG) is a German company specialized in civil and industrial construction, engineering and services based in Mannheim, Germany.

History

Bilfinger dates back to 1880 when August Bernatz founded Bernatz Ingenieurwissenschaft as an engineering business: it became known, from 1886 as Bernatz & Grün and, from 1892, as Grün & Bilfinger when Paul Bilfinger replaced Bernatz as partner. During the Second World War, Grün & Bilfinger employed Jewish slave laborers from the

Kovno Ghetto The Kovno Ghetto was a ghetto established by Nazi Germany to hold the Lithuanian Jews of Kaunas during the Holocaust. At its peak, the Ghetto held 29,000 people, most of whom were later sent to concentration and extermination camps, or were sho ...

in occupied Lithuania where it was known for its brutal harassment of the Jewish slaves. In 1970, Grün & Bilfinger acquired a majority stake in Julius Berger-Bauboag AG, itself a merger of two companies, Julius Berger Tiefbau AG and Berlinische Boden-Gesellschaft AG, both founded in 1890. The combined business, fully integrated in 1975, finally took the name Bilfinger & Berger Bauaktiengesellschaft. In 1994 the acquisition of Razel Company took place. In 2001 the business changed its name to Bilfinger Berger AG. In 2005, Bilfinger bought all shares of Babcock Borsig Service Group from Deutsche Beteiligungs AG. In 2008 the company sold Razel to group Fayat for 137 million euro. In October 2009 the company acquired directly MCE Beteiligungsverwaltungs GmbH itself, a business based in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital of ...

focused on the design, construction and maintenance of facilities in the process industry and the energy sector. In June 2010, a prospectus was issued with the aim of listing Bilfinger Berger Australia on the

Australian Securities Exchange Australian Securities Exchange Ltd or ASX, is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or confused within Australia as ...

via an initial public offering. In July 2010 the listing was abandoned with a

trade sale A trade sale is a common means of exit to a trade buyer. This allows the management to withdraw from the business and may open up the prospect of collaboration on larger projects. The term trade sale is mostly used in the context of venture capital ...

to Lendlease agreed in December 2010. In 2010, services contributed to 80% of the company's total output volume of €8,123 million and EBIT for the services division amounted to €297 million. In November 2011, Bilfinger acquired 98 percent of shares in Neo Structo Construction Private Ltd., located in Surat, India, for a purchase price of €47 million. In 2010 Bilfinger became a

Societas Europaea A ''societas Europaea'' (, ; "European society" or "company"; plural: ; abbr. SE) is a public company registered in accordance with the corporate law of the European Union (EU), introduced in 2004 with the Council Regulation on the Statute ...

(SE). In December 2014 Bilfinger signed a deal to sell the construction division to Switzerland's Implenia AG. It had once been Germany's second largest builder. In June 2016 Bilfinger announced the sale of the facilities management and real estate business to Swedish financial investor EQT. In February 2018 the company announced that it would seek damages from the former directors of the company after alleged breaches in compliance and a series of acquisitions that failed to create shareholder value. After securing shareholder consent in June 2020, Bilfinger reached a settlement with the former Executive Board members. The settlement with a total volume of €18.2 million ends the assertion of claims of for damages by Bilfinger.

Operations

Bilfinger SE is a Deutsche Börse

SDAX The SDAX (German abbreviation for ''Small-Cap-deutsche Aktienindex'') is a stock market index composed of 70 small and medium-sized companies in Germany. These so-called ' small caps' rank directly below the MDAX (mid-cap) shares in terms of or ...

index traded, leading international industrial services provider. The portfolio covers the entire value chain from consulting, engineering, manufacturing, assembly, maintenance, plant expansion as well as turnarounds and also includes environmental technologies and digital applications.
Bilfinger, as a result of numerous acquisitions and disposals, is no longer a traditional construction company but instead a provider of services for industrial plants, power plants and real estate. In financial year 2019, revenues came from industrial and engineering services in the Chemical & Petrochemical (30%), Energy & Utilities (15%), Oil & Gas (30%), Pharma & Biopharma (10%), Metallurgy (5%) and Cement/Other (10%) industries.

Ownership

The ownership of the business as at 31 December 2019 was as follows:

Major projects

Major projects have included: * Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen completed in 1919 *

Busch Memorial Stadium Busch Memorial Stadium, also known as Busch Stadium II, was a multi-purpose sports facility in St. Louis, Missouri, that operated for 40 years, from 1966 through 2005. The stadium served as the home of the St. Louis Cardinals National League ba ...

completed in 1966 * Munich Olympic Stadium completed in 1972 * Dresdner Bank Tower completed in 1978, * Oymapinar Dam in Turkey completed 1984 *

Bang Na Expressway The Bang Na Expressway (full name: Bang Na - Bang Phli - Bang Pakong Expressway), officially Burapha Withi Expressway ( th, ทางพิเศษบูรพาวิถี), is a six-lane elevated highway in Thailand. It is a toll road and ru ...

completed in 2000 * Centennial Bridge over the Panama Canal completed in 2004, *

Svinesund Bridge The Svinesund Bridge ( no, Svinesundsbrua, sv, Svinesundsbron) is a through arch bridge crossing Iddefjord at Svinesund, and joining Sweden and Norway. Svinesund is a sound separating the Swedish municipality of Strömstad from the Norwegian m ...

between Sweden and Norway completed in 2005 *expansion of the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital completed in 2005, *northern section of the Nuremberg–Munich high-speed railway completed in 2006 *

Golden Ears Bridge The Golden Ears Bridge is a six-lane extradosed bridge in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia. It spans the Fraser River, connecting Langley on the south side with Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge on the north side. The bridge opened to traffic on J ...

near Vancouver in Canada completed in 2009, *foundations for the

London Array The London Array is a 175-turbine 630 MW Round 2 offshore wind farm located off the Kent coast in the outer Thames Estuary in the United Kingdom. It was the largest offshore wind farm in the world until Walney Extension reached full pro ...

completed in 2009 * Niederfinow Boat Lift in Germany completed in 2014 *restoration and conversion of

Sonnenstein Castle The Sonnenstein Castle is a castle in Pirna, near Dresden, Germany. It housed a mental hospital, which operated from 1811 to the end of World War II in 1945. During the War, it functioned as an extermination centre for the Nazi ''Aktion T4'' pro ...

in Pirna for the Administration Offices in

Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge Saxon Switzerland-Eastern Ore Mountains (german: Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge) is a district ('' Kreis'') in Saxony, Germany. It is named after the mountain ranges Saxon Switzerland and Eastern Ore Mountains. History The district was esta ...

in Germany completed in 2012 *Block 9 of the

Power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many pow ...

of Mannheim in Germany completed in 2013 * Edinburgh Trams line in Scotland completed in 2014 *North-South line of

Cologne Stadtbahn The Cologne Stadtbahn is a light rail system in the German city of Cologne, including several surrounding cities of the Cologne Bonn Region (Bergisch Gladbach, Bonn, Bornheim, Brühl, Frechen, Hürth, Leverkusen-Schlebusch, Wesseling). The ...

in Germany completed in 2015 *Sedrun section of Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland (along with Frutiger AG, Implenia and Impresa Pizzarotti as part of the Transco consortium) completed in 2016 *

Düsseldorf Stadtbahn __NOTOC__ The Düsseldorf Stadtbahn, together with the Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn and the Düsseldorf Straßenbahn (Tram), is the backbone of the public transport system of Düsseldorf, Germany, and is integrated in the Rhine-Ruhr Stadtbahn network. T ...

from

Düsseldorf-Bilk station Düsseldorf-Bilk station is a through station in the district of Bilk in the city of Düsseldorf in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has two platforms and it is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 4 station. History The stat ...

to Düsseldorf Wehrhahn station completed in 2016

Controversies

In March 2009, a building collapsed in Cologne due to the nearby construction site for the

Nord-Süd-Stadtbahn . The collapse is suspected to be caused by the construction works, and to several irregularities. In June 2020, Bilfinger reached an out-of-court agreement that settles all civil claims arising from the collapse of the city’s municipal archive building. Several other construction projects are suspected to have been conducted with irregularities: the

Wehrhahn-Linie , the Nuremberg–Munich high-speed railway and the

Bundesautobahn 1 is an autobahn in Germany. It runs from Heiligenhafen in Schleswig-Holstein to Saarbrücken, a distance of , but is incomplete between Cologne and Trier. B 207 continues north from Heiligenhafen to Puttgarden, at the end of the island of Feh ...

. In November 2018, Bilfinger was sued by

Christopher Steele Christopher David Steele (born 24 June 1964) is a British former intelligence officer with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. He ran the Russia desk at MI6 headquarters in London between 2006 and 200 ...

, who alleged that the company owed €150,000 for an investigation into Bilfinger's activities in Nigeria and Sakhalin.

References

External links

* * {{Authority control Companies based in Mannheim Construction and civil engineering companies of Germany Mannheim Construction and civil engineering companies established in 1880 German companies established in 1880 Companies formerly in the MDAX