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

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (), is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the States of Ger ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

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 (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Grün & Bilfinger employed Jewish slave laborers from the Kovno Ghetto in occupied

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

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 (Pronunciation: , ; ) is the capital of Upper Austria and List of cities and towns in Austria, third-largest city in Austria. Located on the river Danube, the city is in the far north of Austria, south of the border with the Czech Repub ...

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 (ASX) is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary Exchange (organized market), securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or c ...

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 investm ...

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

Lendlease Lendlease is an Australian multinational construction and real estate company, headquartered in Barangaroo, Sydney, New South Wales. History Founding The company was established as Lendlease by Dick Dusseldorp in 1958 to provide finance fo ...

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 (, ; "European society" or "company"; plural: ; abbr. SE) is a public company registered in accordance with the European corporate law, 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 Deutsche Börse AG (), or the Deutsche Börse Group, is a German multinational corporation that offers a marketplace for organizing the trading of shares and other securities. It is also a transaction services provider, giving companies and inv ...

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, also known as the Bridge at Remagen, was a bridge across the river Rhine in Germany which was captured by United States Army forces in early March 1945 during the Battle of Remagen, in the closing weeks of World War I ...

Remagen Remagen () is a town in Germany in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, in the district of Ahrweiler (district), Ahrweiler. It is about a one-hour drive from Cologne, just south of Bonn, the former West Germany, West German seat of government. It i ...

completed in 1919 *

Busch Memorial Stadium Busch Memorial Stadium (Busch Stadium II) was a multi-purpose sports facility in St. Louis, Missouri, that operated for 40 years, from 1966 St. Louis Cardinals season, 1966 through 2005 St. Louis Cardinals season, 2005. Built as Civic Center Bu ...

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

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

completed in 1984 * Bang Na Expressway completed in 2000 * Blue Line in Bangkok completed in 2004, * Centennial Bridge over the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal () is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. It cuts across the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Panama, and is a Channel (geography), conduit for maritime trade between th ...

completed in 2004, *

Svinesund Bridge The Svinesund Bridge (, ) 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 municipality of Halden, and thus it is ...

between

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

and

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

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 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 cit ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

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 pr ...

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 Sonnenstein Nazi Death Institute, extermination cen ...

Pirna Pirna (; , ) 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 a ''Große ...

for the Administration Offices in

Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge Saxon Switzerland-Eastern Ore Mountains (, ) is a district ('' Kreis'') in Saxony, Germany. It is named after the mountain ranges Saxon Switzerland and Eastern Ore Mountains. History The district was established by merging the former districts ...

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 electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electr ...

in Germany completed in 2013 *

Edinburgh Trams Edinburgh Trams is a tramway in Edinburgh, Scotland, operated by Edinburgh Trams Ltd. It is an line between Newhaven, Edinburgh, Newhaven and Edinburgh Airport, with 23 tram stops, stops. A modern tram network for Edinburgh was proposed by ...

line in

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

completed in 2014 *North-South line of Cologne Stadtbahn in Germany completed in 2015 *Sedrun section of

Gotthard Base Tunnel The Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT; , , ) is a railway tunnel through the Alps in Switzerland. It opened in June 2016 and full service began the following December. With a route length of , it is the world's longest railway and deepest traffic tunn ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

(along with Frutiger AG, Implenia and Impresa Pizzarotti as part of the Transco consortium) completed in 2016 *

Düsseldorf Stadtbahn __NOTOC__ The Düsseldorf Stadtbahn () is a ''Stadtbahn'' ("city train", i.e. urban light rail system) serving Düsseldorf and surrounding areas in the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region of the Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Togeth ...

from Düsseldorf-Bilk station to Düsseldorf Wehrhahn station completed in 2016

Controversies

In March 2009, a building collapsed in Cologne due to the nearby construction site for the Cologne Stadtbahn 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. 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, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

and

Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...

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 Companies listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange Societas Europaea companies