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

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (german: Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

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 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, 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 ...

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 via an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

. In July 2010 the listing was abandoned with a trade sale to

Lendlease Lendlease is a globally integrated real estate company that creates and invests in communities, workplaces, retail, and infrastructure projects, headquartered in Barangaroo, New South Wales, Australia. History Founding The company was estab ...

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 f ...

(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 Deutsche Börse AG () or the Deutsche Börse Group, is a German company offering marketplace organizing for the trading of shares and other securities. It is also a transaction services provider. It gives companies and investors access to gl ...

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 cap company, small caps' rank directly below the MDAX (mid-cap) shar ...

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 The Ludendorff Bridge (sometimes referred to as the Bridge at Remagen) was in early March 1945 a critical remaining bridge across the river Rhine in Germany when it was captured during the Battle of Remagen by United States Army forces durin ...

Remagen Remagen ( ) is a town in Germany in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, in the district of Ahrweiler. It is about a one-hour drive from Cologne, just south of Bonn, the former West German capital. It is situated on the left (western) bank of the ...

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 ...

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

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

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 The Panama Canal ( es, Canal de Panamá, link=no) is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a condui ...

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 mun ...

between Sweden and

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

completed in 2005 *expansion of the

Gloucestershire Royal Hospital Gloucestershire Royal Hospital is an acute District General Hospital on the Great Western Road in Gloucester operated by the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. History In 1912, construction on a 149-bed infirmary started on Great Wes ...

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 Ju ...

near

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

completed in 2009, *foundations for the London Array 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 ...

Pirna Pirna (; hsb, Pěrno; ) is a town in Saxony, Germany and capital of the administrative district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The town's population is over 37,000. Pirna is located near Dresden and is an important district town as well as ...

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 estab ...

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 ...

in Germany completed in 2013 *

Edinburgh Trams Edinburgh Trams is a tramway in Edinburgh, Scotland, operated by Edinburgh Trams Ltd. It is a line between St Andrew Square in the New Town and Edinburgh Airport, with 15 stops. Construction began in June 2008, and after encountering dela ...

line in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

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). T ...

in Germany completed in 2015 *Sedrun section of

Gotthard Base Tunnel , rm, Tunnel da basa dal Sogn Gottard , image = 20141120 gotthard-basistunnel02-wikipedia-hannes-ortlieb.jpg , image_size = 250 , caption = Turnout at Faido multifunction station , line = Gotthard Line , location = Switzerland ( Uri, Grisons and ...

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 sta ...

Düsseldorf Wehrhahn station Düsseldorf Wehrhahn station is located about one kilometre north of Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof in central Düsseldorf in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is on the Cologne–Duisburg line and is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a categ ...

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 Fehma ...

. In November 2018, Bilfinger was sued by Christopher Steele, who alleged that the company owed €150,000 for an investigation into Bilfinger's activities in

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

and

Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, r=Sakhalín, p=səxɐˈlʲin; ja, 樺太 ''Karafuto''; zh, c=, p=Kùyèdǎo, s=库页岛, t=庫頁島; Manchu: ᠰᠠᡥᠠᠯᡳᠶᠠᠨ, ''Sahaliyan''; Orok: Бугата на̄, ''Bugata nā''; Nivkh ...

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