Carillion has won £470m of contracts at its Middle East joint venture, Al Futtaim-Carillion. The Independent. Financial Times. The Times

The construction group is involved in a number of huge building projects, including Dubai Festival City – a new town that will be home to 25,000 people – and a mix of hotels, leisure and retail developments in Cairo.

John McDonough, chief executive, said he hoped to double the amount of work the company won in the Middle East over the next five years. He said: ‘The progress we are making in the Middle East represents a further major step towards delivering our objective of more than doubling revenue from this region over the next five years, through extending our existing operations in Dubai and Oman into new territories.’

Carillion’s order book is filled with projects, also in Britain, Canada and the Caribbean, worth £16bn. Yesterday, it posted a 12% increase in revenues, to £1.9bn for the six months to 30 June. Underlying pretax profit jumped by 28% to £34.3m.