The bulls that saw off the bear

This year has not been the easiest for the construction sector - so much so that this has even become something of a cliché. Infrastructure contracts have made life a misery for construction companies. A lot of contractors have lost their financial liquidity, there have been bankruptcy filings, including those of such giants as PBG. But this sudden slump has not come out of the blue. "The direct reasons for the weakness of listed construction companies can be found in the offers that were calculated considerably below the costs estimated by investors as well as in the steep rises in the prices of construction materials and services over the last two years. There has also been a shortage of organisational solutions, such as the symmetrical division of contractual risks between the ordering party and the contractor, the indexation of the value of contracts to changes in construction costs, or the securing of payments between the contractors and sub-contractors. Also, the procedure