In the boardrooms of Bedfordview, Murray & Roberts (M&R) was once synonymous with engineering supremacy — a firm that poured concrete into the DNA of SA’s infrastructure. For over a century the company stood as a colossus of cement and steel, credited with helping to wire the power stations, sink the shafts and span the bridges that defined post-war industrial ambition in the southern hemisphere.
And then, it didn’t. What happened to M&R is not a simple case of bad management or unlucky timing. It is the story of how a proudly SA conglomerate — with legacy projects stretching from Gautrain tunnels to Middle Eastern refineries — tried to outrun gravity in a world that stopped tolerating slow, debt-laden dinosaurs.
The fall, while long-anticipated by analysts who saw the balance sheet fray years ago, now feels almost anticlimactic. It delisted from the JSE in 2024 with barely a murmur. The same company that once led joint ventures on R100bn energy projects exited the public stage with less noise than the generators it once installed.
Too big to think small
The decline began — ironically — with ambition. In the 2000s, M&R pursued a bold diversification strategy. Mining, oil and gas, transport infrastructure and power — no sector was too distant, no region too risky. From Perth to Vancouver, Clough and other acquisitions were swept up into a grand vision: to become a global engineering powerhouse.
It looked smart at first — until the energy supercycle ended, Eskom’s mega-projects descended into chaos and Covid-19 shattered every just-in-time assumption baked into their project models. Suddenly, the globe-spanning footprint looked less like scale and more like sprawl.
“Project-based revenue is only good when the projects continue,” a former executive once said off-record, reflecting on the consequences of taking on lump-sum turnkey contracts with razor-thin margins. “We stopped being engineers and started gambling on spreadsheets.”
A victim of SA’s procurement disorder
Being in bed with the SA state proved both a privilege and a poison. Kusile and Medupi, the two coal-fired power station mega-projects that were meant to be feathered crowns in M&R’s cap, became slow-motion disasters. Cost overruns, design flaws, delays — all the classic ailments of state-led infrastructure — bled the company.
Cash flow dried up. Legal disputes dragged on. And like many large contractors, M&R was caught between nonpayment by government entities and obligations to subcontractors. In a better-governed country, this might have triggered dispute resolution. In SA, it triggered insolvency risk.
The risk was magnified by a capital structure dependent on forward momentum. The moment the work paused, the walls started closing in. M&R did not so much collapse as stall, then slowly rust.
The last straw was global
By the time the pandemic hit, the business was already nursing wounds. Sites shuttered, workers stranded and delays in mobilisation turned to full-scale suspensions. But even before the virus, Clough — the Australian acquisition touted as the crown jewel — had been struggling with underperforming oil and gas contracts. Attempts to pivot to green energy came too little, too late.
M&R tried everything: selling off divisions, restructuring debt, promising platform strategies and even flirting with private equity. But the world had moved on. Infrastructure development had become leaner, more digitised and less tolerant of slow-moving firms with century-old pedigrees.
Lessons from the rubble
The demise of M&R is not unique — Germany’s Hochtief, the UK’s Carillion and Australia’s Leighton all share chapters in the same cautionary tale. But M&R’s downfall has a distinctly SA flavour. It was a company that tried to remain “big” in an economy that no longer supported the infrastructure of big ambition.
It also shows what happens when old reputations compete with new realities. Reputation doesn’t pay subcontractors. Legacy doesn’t fund working capital. And in today’s global construction environment nostalgia is not a strategy.
For those in the industry, the end of M&R feels like the closing of a long book — a reminder that engineering prowess, while noble, is not immune to economics, nor to politics, nor to hubris.
M&R didn’t crash; it dissolved — quietly, elegantly, fatally. In empty site offices somewhere near a half-completed shaft or over-designed conveyor system, there are surely still yellow M&R hard hats gathering dust — once worn by someone who thought they were building the future.
They were, just not the one they imagined.
• Siphika is CEO of the Construction Management Foundation.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.