Goodbye SNC-Lavalin, hello AtkinsRéalis

On Tuesday, SNC-Lavalin, the Montreal-based engineering and project managing company, rebranded itself AtkinsRéalis and its chief U.S. subsidiary Atkins Nuclear Secured is now rechristened as AtkinsRéalis Nuclear Secured, company officials said this week.

The parent company, which is involved in the nuclear industry and trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, will officially change its stock ticker Monday to “ATRL” from “SNC,” Steve Morriss, the company’s U.S. President of Engineering Services, told Exchange Monitor by phone.

AtkinsRéalis rang the opening bell at the Toronto Stock Exchange Wednesday, Morriss said.

The new name builds upon a century of history from brands such as SNC-Lavalin, Atkins, Faithful+Gould, DTS and Atkins Acuity, the company said in a press release.

The legal name of the company, however, will not change until SNC-Lavalin “obtains shareholder approval, as required by law, at its 2024 annual meeting of shareholders,” according to the press release. That is set to occur in May 2024.

The name change has nothing to do with a Canadian investigation a few years ago into alleged bribes paid by SNC officials in Libya, Morriss said. A branch of SNC-Lavalin pleaded guilty and paid a fine of more than a quarter-billion Canadian dollars in 2019 to settle the matter, according to Reuters. “None of our 36,000 people were any part of that” matter, which dates back more than a decade, Morriss said. 

A contractor team led by the U.S. arm of AtkinsRéalis is pursuing a legal challenge to a $45-billion contract award for managing radioactive waste tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The team sued the winner, a BWX Technologies-led team, in federal court this spring.