looks like downgrade/writeoff and rights issue

Seems that the engineering businesses have been really suffering. Leighton has had a lit of rumours of downgrades for a while now.

From Downer indication Leighton is probably going to have a write-down (I believe the market has been expecting this). I suspect that there could be a write-off coming up as well.

Leighton is quite heavily geared which means a rights issue at a discount is probably in the pipeline as well (I know DOW recently went the same path just a few weeks ago).

LEI has a market cap of $9billion. My guess is that there is a write-off in the range of $600million to $1billion. I say the figure would be a big one if it warrants a trading halt. If its only a small write-off like $50million or $100million I think the company would not halt trading for 2 days and their drawdown facilities should cover a small loss. Then issuance of a rights issue for provisions.

What do others think?