Building firm Kier has bought the highways maintenance specialist May Gurney in a deal worth £221M. Six thousand May Gurney employees are joining the 10,000 staff of Kier, but there are likely to be around 200 redundancies.

May Gurney’s name is not set to disappear immediately as some clients “are keen to keep the historical connection”, according to former May Gurney fleet managing director Mike Baldwin, who joins Kier. “But there are discussions to be had regarding branding.”

An earlier approach by Costain to buy May Gurney was rejected by shareholders.

May Gurney has been operating out of Norfolk since the 1920s and has built a business that today offers highways term maintenance contracting for local authorities including Surrey and the London Borough of Harrow. It recently launched a nationwide surface treatments business and invested in a new materials manufacturing plant at its Wymondham site.

Kier is one of three construction firms to have secured work last month to build the Mersey Gateway project, as part of the Merseylink consortium. It helped to build the Channel Tunnel Rail Link through Kent and has worked on railway, airport and highway schemes around the world such as in Dubai and Hong Kong.

Kier Group chief executive Paul Sheffield said: “May Gurney and Kier share similar values which will go a long way towards the successful integration of both businesses.”

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