Wood Group chairman on GE deal
Wood Group, based in Aberdeen, has announced it has struck a deal to sell its Well Services division to GE Oil and Gas, part of the vast GE conglomerate.
It has got a top dollar price of $2.8bn (£1.7bn), of which $1.7bn (£1bn) is to be distributed among shareholders. Wood's stock price duly bounced.
As a world-leader in oilfield services, Wood Group has done a lot more acquiring than selling in the 40-plus years since it moved out of the fisheries business, most recently including the purchase of PSN, another Aberdeen company, with 8,000 worldwide employees, for which it is paying £600m.
But the sale of the Well Services division is a significant development in focussing Wood Group's activities on a narrower range of services, as well as showing GE is investing rapidly. It succeeded in December in buying Tyneside-based Wellstream, for £800m, attracted by its big presence in Brazil.
Wood Group chairman, Sir Ian Wood, talked to ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Scotland's business and economy editor, Douglas Fraser.