LRT Builder’s Stock ‘Untouchable’: Analyst

Published 03/30/2024 · Updated 03/30/2024

The Motley Fool investing website says it wouldn’t touch AtkinsRealis (the former SNC Lavalin company) stock “with a 10-foot pole.”

Here’s why:

The Kerala Electric Dam scandal. AtkinsRéalis was the contractor on this project, which was mired by corruption accusations, which led to billions in losses. Several Indian government officials were fired over this scandal.
The Jacques Cartier Bridge scandal. AtkinsRéalis was accused of giving more than $2 billion in bribes to acquire and maintain the contract to build the bridge.
The 2004–2011 scandal surrounding illegal political donations, some of which AtkinsRéalis gave.
The 2011 Libya scandal, in which AtkinsRéalis was accused of defrauding that country out of $130 million.
The McGill Arthur Porter Library kickback scandal. AtkinsRéalis was accused of being involved in illegal kickbacks tied to the construction of a library.
The SaskPower controversy. Here, AtkinsRéalis was accused of building a carbon capture system that had serious problems leading to 60% downtime.

Hey, you forgot one.

Most Ottawans ruefully remember SNC Lavalin’s continuing work on the problem-plagued Confederation and Trillium line light-rail fiascos.

An angry public might also remember that the city’s auditor general Nathalie Gougeon had put an audit on her workplan to probe the Trillium Line procurement. That was the one where the winning company, an AtkinsRealis subsidiary, won the contract despite failing the technical standards in the bidding twice.

The Bulldog runs a ticker that calculates the amount of time since Gougeon could have had the audit on her workplan and eventually did, but then slowly pushed it down the priority list until it fell off. No one noticed except … well … you know.

At the time of writing this post, the tally since the AG’s odd treatment of the Trillium Line audit is 486 days, nine hours, 21 minutes, and 41 seconds. But you can get more information on the non-audit and the current elapsed time by clicking here.

Ken Gray

Ottawa commuters frustrated by 3 days and counting of transit chaos