Amey plans £40m technology sell-off to soothe City nerves

Amey, the struggling support services company, will tomorrow announce a re-structuring plan in an attempt to get back into profit.

This will include the sale of its £40m technology division, a major reduction in the number of contracts the company bids for and possible redundancies.

Amey has lost 65 per cent of its value since March after it restated its accounts. Using new standards for accounting for the costs of bidding for Private Finance Initiative contracts, this turned a £56m profit into an £18m loss.

Amey has hired the corporate finance arm of accountancy firm Deloitte & Touche to find buyers for its technology arm and initial offers were submitted last week.

Within the division is Datel, a company that provides customer information at Railtrack stations.

A well-placed source said that Network Rail, the company set to take over Railtrack, "should have its eye on this, as it is critical to running the railways".

Amey will also announce a more selective approach to bidding for PFI contracts. The City is still nervous about Amey and some analysts believe that the company's chief executive, Brian Staples, will have to spend a lot of time going through the company's numbers.

One analyst, who asked not to be named, said: "Amey isn't a dot com. There's a business in there that generates earnings. But what we really need from the company is absolute clarity over profit recognition."