(Reuters) - British building and services company Carillion (L:CLLN) is due to hold emergency meetings with its bankers in the coming days as it speeds up its search for a financial rescue plan, Sky News reported on Saturday.
Carillion, which is involved in infrastructure projects for the British and other governments including Britain's planned high-speed rail link HS2, has been fighting for its survival after costly contract delays and a downturn in new business.
It is also under investigation by regulators over "the timeliness and content" of statements it made before it issued a profit warning last year.
Sky News, quoting unidentified sources, said Carillion's rescue plan would involve handing back loss-making contracts, revising the terms of others and possibly accepting government financial support if it cannot secure private funding.
That could be a loan on commercial terms, a deal to reprice some contracts, or to allow Carillion to hand back loss-making work to the government, Sky News said.
A spokesman for Carillion declined to comment on the report.
Analysts have estimated the company has debt including provisions, pensions and accounts payable of about 1.5 billion pounds ($2.04 billion) compared with its market capitalization of about 70 million pounds, according to Thomson Reuters data.
In December, Carillion said discussions with stakeholders regarding its options to cut debt and avoid a breach of debt covenants were "progressing well".
Sky News said the company faced a funding gap of hundreds of millions of pounds and the precise size of the shortfall depended on whether it was able to get out of loss-making contracts. The company's lenders included Barclays (L:BARC), HSBC (L:HSBA) and Santander UK (MC:SAN), it said.
Carillion, which operates in Canada and the Middle East as well as Britain, last month brought forward the start date for new chief executive Andrew Davies to Jan. 22.
