Has this UK company been boosted by Donald Trump’s promise to build a wall on the Mexican border?
US President Donald Trump has reiterated that he will build a wall on America's border with Mexico – and one British company seems to be benefiting.
Ashtead Group is leading the FTSE 100, with its share price up by more than three per cent. The company generates 80 per cent of its revenues in the US and rents out industrial equipment to "lift, power, generate, move, heat and ventilate" – basically, the kind of equipment needed to build a massive wall.
Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow. Among many other things, we will build the wall!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
Investors are probably also betting Ashtead will profit if Trump follows through on his election promise to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure over a 10-year period. The pledge featured heavily in Trump's inauguration speech, as he vowed to create a more wealthy America by building more roads, bridges and factories.
Read more: Has this UK company been boosted by Donald Trump's wall?
In a document for his vision on infrastructure, Trump wrote of the previous administration: "Under the failing Obama-Clinton policies, infrastructure projects across the US are routinely delayed for years and years due to endless studies, layer-upon-layer of red-tape, bureaucracy, and lawsuits – with virtually no end in sight.
"This increases costs on taxpayers and blocks Americans from obtaining the kind of infrastructure that is needed for them to compete economically."