The story
The company was formed when a team of engineers acquired Construcciones Padrós S.A., a construction business which had been in financial difficulty, in 1983. The company acquired a majority holding in Cobra, a support services business, and merged with OCISA S.A. to create OCP Construcciones, S.A. In 1993, it went on to merge with Ginés Navarro Construcciones, S.A. to create Grupo ACS in 1997. It subsequently bought Onyx SCL, an environmental contractor in 1999 and stakes in Xfera and Broadnet, telecommunications businesses in 2000 before going on to acquire Dragados S.A., a large contractor established during the Second World War to dredge the Port of Tarifa and which had subsequently gained extensive experience in hydro-electric and civil engineering work, in 2003.
During 2005, ACS entered the US market via the establishment of Dragados USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dragados S.A. One of the first undertakings of the newly formed branch was a successful bid for the New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) East Side Access Manhattan Tunnels project, being awarded an initial contract valued at $428 million. In April 2008, the MTA awarded another contract, valued at $506 million, to the company. Separate undertakings by the company included the Harbor Bridge Project, and the Maryland's Purple Line.
During 2006, the company acquired 22.0% of the Spanish utility company Unión Fenosa; its stake in the business was subsequently increased to 45%. Two years later, ACS Group opted to divest its stake to Gas Natural.
In September 2010, ACS Group issued an offer to purchase a controlling stake in German rival Hochtief; the latter mounted an unsuccessful challenge to this approach. During April 2011, the firm raised its stake in Hochtief to 50.16%, effectively acquiring the company.
During 2017, the company participated in a bidding war to acquire the toll road management business Abertis. In October 2018, ACS Group joined with the Italian holding firm Atlantia to undertake a 16.5 billion euro ($19 billion) acquisition of Abertis as part of its ambition to build the world's largest toll road group; the transaction was approved by the European Commission. Two years later, under the company's strategy of continuous rotation of mature assets to generate resources for new projects, ACS Group sold a 74% stake in a batch of six tranches of ‘shadow toll’ highways in Spain to Hermes for €950 million.
In October 2020, ACS Group announced that it had received a €5.2 billion ($6.08 billion) bid from the French infrastructure group Vinci SA for its ACS Industrial division; this transaction was completed during the following year. Additional arrangements between the two companies led to the creation of a joint venture focused on the renewable energy sector.
During 2021, ACS Group conducted an internal review to simplify its structure and allegedly considered spinning out its construction business; around this time, the company was focused on increasing its toll road division within the European market. In April of that year, it made an approach to purchase Atlantia's 88% stake in motorway division Autostrade per l'Italia, which valued the business at 9 billion-10 billion euros ($10.7 billion-$11.9 billion). In September 2022, Atlantia sold its 14.46% stake in Hochtief to ACS Group in exchange for 577.8 million euros ($576.9 million).
In July 2022, the company was fined €57.1 million, along with five other contractors, by the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC) for bidding collusion in public tenders for building and civil infrastructure works.
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On 30 July 2024, ACS Group and Hochtief announced that Dragados North America would be integrated with Flatiron. The combined company, Flatiron Dragados, would be held 61.8% by ACS and 38.2% by Hochtief. That same year, ACS Group reported that it had achieved better than expected results, which was largely attributed to its construction portfolio in the United States and Australia, particularly its toll road interests.
From Wikipedia’s article on ACS Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5