Balfour Beatty hangs up on telecoms division

Irish engineering services business Obelisk has bought Balfour Beatty’s telecoms division.

Obelisk will retain Balfour Beatty’s existing team of employees and partners and acquire new UK headquarters in Southampton. The team will deliver services and turnkey infrastructure solutions for clients in the UK and Irish telecoms and energy sectors.

The move, which follows Obelisk’s acquisition by Constructel Visabeira in 2022, underpins the company’s plans to extend its service offering, technical capacity and scope for innovation in fixed line, mobile and energy services.

Balfour Beatty has not commented on the sale and neither party has disclosed the value of the deal.

Obelisk chief executive Ronnie Delaney said: “We are very pleased to welcome the telecoms team from Balfour Beatty, who together have delivered consistently in this sector for clients such as EE, Cellnex, Cornerstone and Vodafone.”

According to Delaney, the telecoms team, led by operations manager Philip Fensom, will bring “knowledge, experience and like-minded values to further enhance Obelisk as a partner of choice in the provision of innovative and quality telecoms infrastructure solutions sustainably and safely”.

He added: “Obelisk will continue to accelerate new growth opportunities in these sectors, going beyond connection to invest in and expand our skilled workforce across the UK and Ireland, and offer more complete solutions for our clients in new and existing markets.”

Fensom said: “I along with my fellow team members look forward to working with the Obelisk team, to continue to deliver successfully, and assume new challenges as the business goes from strength to strength.”

It comes after Obelisk last year announced its acquisition by Constructel Visabeira, a leading company in the global telecoms and energy networks engineering sector and subsidiary of holding company Grupo Visabeira.

The new partnership served as part of Obelisk’s growth strategy and saw the business join Constructel Visabeira alongside other telecoms companies such as MJ Quinn, providing access to new markets including the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and the US.