CH2M shareholders voted Wednesday to approve the deal that will make the Colorado-based company a wholly owned subsidiary of Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering.
The preliminary results of the special meeting of CH2M shareholders show more than 95 percent approval for the merger, the two companies said in a joint press release. The vote should clear the way for completion of the $3.27 billion buyout.
The combination of the two international engineering concerns will become an even larger player within the Energy Department’s weapons complex.
CH2M already holds sizable cleanup contracts for DOE including key roles at the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. It leads the corporate partnership that in October took over environmental remediation of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky in a deal that could be worth $1.5 billion over a decade. However, an AECOM-CH2M team lost out on the $4.7 billion liquid waste contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, but has protested the award to a partnership led by BWX Technologies.
CH2M and BWXT manage the West Valley Demonstration Project in upstate New York under a $545 million project contract that extends until March 2020.
Jacobs is part of a team, with Honeywell and Stoller Newport News Nuclear, that in May won a 10-year contract worth up to $5 billion to operate the Nevada National Security Site for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. Leidos, Jacobs and the Centerra Group comprise Mission Support Alliance, which provides infrastructure services at the Hanford Site.
The merger, which should close by the end of year, would create a global $15 billion company with over 70,000 employees, based on current payrolls.
