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Morgan Sindall said Morgan Ashurst, its construction division, has won a £44 million contract to build a new college at Bideford, Devon. The construction and regeneration group said that work on site would start this month and would end by August 2011.

Low & Bonar, the technical textiles and contract flooring manufacturer, reported a higher first-half pre-tax profit of £8 million and said that it was confident of sustained progress.

St Modwen Properties, the regeneration specialist, reported a full-year pre-tax loss of £20 million and said that its net assets per share had fallen by 4 per cent to 371p, from 387p on November 30, adding that future market conditions remained uncertain.

Consumer goods

InBev, the owner of Stella Artois and Beck’s, toasted victory in its battle to acquire Anheuser-Busch after raising its bid to $52 billion (£26.1 billion) and offering a boardroom seat to August Busch IV, the Budweiser maker’s chief executive.

Engineering

Meggitt, the engineering group based in Dorset, said its Meggitt Defense Systems unit had been awarded the first $29.5 million (£14.8 million) increment of a $64.8 million contract by General Dynamics, the US defence conglomerate. The order is for 647 Abrams thermal management systems for battle tanks, to be delivered between 2009 and 2013.

JCB, the construction equipment maker based in Staffordshire, is to cut 500 manufacturing jobs and expects to make a further “proportional” number of staff positions redundant. It employs 5,700 people in Britain and is reducing its production schedule by 20 per cent for the rest of this year.

Continental, the debt-burdened tyre and car parts manufacturer, is being courted by Schaeffler, the German ball-bearing manufacturer. Its share price rose by 22 per cent after it confirmed the approach.

Hamworthy, the engineering company based in Dorset, said that each of its principal product groups was performing in line with expectations, adding that its first-quarter order intake was £51 million and its order book stood at £301 million on June 30.

Health

Oxford BioMedica, the biotech group, said that the Independent Oncology Clinical Trials Office remaind committed to the Phase- III trial for TroVax, the company’s colorectal cancer treatment, although the trial, along with the rest of the Trovax programme, is under review by Oxford and Sanofi-Aventis, its French partner, after recent clinical setbacks.

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