Serco slumps after Middle East pullout cuts bid pipeline by a third

Serco said it made the decision as it was "taking much longer than anticipated" and so it bidding teams has been stood down in order to "redirect efforts elsewhere".

Together, light rail opportunities in the Middle East represented £2.5bn of the £7.9bn pipeline of larger new bid opportunities Serco boasted at the time of August's half year results.

These bid opportunities, thought to be three major light rail and tram operations, had expected to be due for decision within the next two years.

The company said on Monday afternoon that "unless the situation were to change, these bids will no longer be part of the next pipeline update that will be reported within our full year results".

In August chief executive Rupert Soames had said: "The most striking element is the order intake, which for two successive periods has been very strong, totalling some £4bn in the last twelve months, and we have succeeded in maintaining the pipeline at broadly similar levels despite strong order conversion. However, as we said in June, we remain sensibly cautious in the light of the political environment in several of our markets becoming markedly more unpredictable."

This caution included a specific mention of the dispute between Qatar and neighbouring countries, which Serco noted "has unsettled the region".

Serco shares, having earlier this year climbed back from multi-year lows breached depths to which they had sunk in 2016, have tumbled back towards those levels as the year has gone on, and on Monday fell around 7% in a late lurch to 100.15p.