Carillion announced a rare piece of good news in the construction sector as it guided investors to expect higher earnings because of resilient trading and a lower tax burden.

Shares in the company, which now makes most of its money from providing services such as building maintenance and from investing in public-private partnerships, rose 19.5p to 239p. Much of the benefit announced yesterday comes from Carillion’s purchase of Alfred McAlpine in February.

'We’ve broken the back of the integration process', said John McDonough, chief executive, revealing a further £10m of integration and reorganisation cost savings, bringing the expected total to £50m for the period until the end of 2009.

Financial Times