Grupo ACS and Grupo Dragados are set to merge, creating a Spanish construction leader. Providing the respective Extraordinary Shareholder Meetings approve the merger, ACS will issue 33 new shares for each 68 Dragados shares. This equates to 54.46M new shares to Dragados shareholders, representing 46% of the share capital of the new group, or US$19.79 per share. Dragados’ shareholders need only look at the success of ACS’s chairman, Florentino Perez, in his role as president of Real Madrid football club for encouragement. The club is a nine-time European champion, and recently signed the world’s richest football player, David Beckham. Based on the 2002 year-end results, the combined revenues of ACS and Dragados were approximately US$11bn, and net profit was US$403M. Estimates for the current fiscal year put revenues in excess of US$12.1bn.