Balfour Beatty sells Andover Controls to Schneider Electric

Balfour Beatty has sold its Andover Controls subsidiary for £220m. The buyer is Schneider Electric, the French power and control group.
Andover Controls designs, manufacturers and supplies building management controls and security systems. Its applications include remote monitoring, CCTV and digital recording.
It was acquired by BICC - then Balfour's parent group - in 1986, when the cable manufacturing conglomerate wanted to establish an electronics division and acquired a presence in the market.
Despite all parts of the BICC empire dissolving in subsequent years, apart from the group's former construction wing Balfour Beatty, the Andover Controls division has been kept running by Balfour until now because it generates good money - last year's turnover of £95m resulted in an operating profit of £16m.
But the offer of a 14-times exit multiple (the ratio of price offered to annual profit) was too good
to resist.
A Balfour spokesman said: "We already had more than £100m of new cash at the last financial year end, so we won't sit and look at the [new] money in the bank. It will be invested in the likes of PFI equity and acquisitions."