Balfour Beatty has recorded a number of contract wins this year. In July, Mansell (its subsidiary) secured a £14.5m project to redevelop accommodation for United States Air Force staff at RAF Lakenheath. During August, Gammon Construction, the Hong Kong-based construction group in which Balfour Beatty has a 50% interest, was awarded three new contracts with a total value of £185m. Then earlier this month it announced that GTBB, its joint venture with Carillion, had been awarded a £110m contract by Network Rail and that it had won three new building contracts worth another £110m.

However the international engineering, construction and services group, which trades at about 296p a share, is at the moment probably most commonly associated with the Hatfield rail disaster in 2000.

On 14 July the Criminal Court threw out a corporate manslaughter charge against the company, which has a market cap of £1.2bn. However, this was not a full reprieve: on 7 October Balfour Beatty issued a statement saying Balfour Beatty Rail Infrastructure Services had been fined and ordered to pay costs following its guilty plea to charges brought under the Health and Safety at Work Act. The company had been fined £10m for what a judge had described as "one of the worst examples of industrial negligence" he had seen.

Arbuthnot Securities responded by maintaining a buy rating, as it believed the outcome was already expected. On 7 October the same analyst declared the fine didn't "look too bad for a company with its market capitalisation". The analyst said considering the level of concern that had hung over the shares the announcement had removed some uncertainty. The news also prompted the stock, which has been trading in a range of 268.75p-362.00p (52 weeks), to climb 16.5p on the day to 312.5p.

The company's first-half results, which were announced mid-August and showed pre-tax profits from continuing operations had risen by 18%, were deemed positive but in line with Numis Securities' expectations. The broker took heart from the dividend, which was up about 23% to 3.5p, and maintained its hold rating with a target price of 322p, but was tempted to take profits on any further strength. In October Numis Securities retained its hold rating on the company with a 340p target price after Balfour Beatty announced three contract wins, which the broker believed to be of good quality. However CAI Cheuvreux undermined these gains by saying it thought that these were unlikely to impact the share price and therefore maintained an outperform rating.

On 14 October Bridgewell Securities stated that the company's recent underperformance, prompted mainly by the complexity of its transition to new IFRS accounting standards, provided a buying opportunity. It stated that with upside of 20% on the sum-of-the-parts, "investors should be buying the shares".