Fluor Agrees to Buy Control of Cleanup Firm : Environment: Purchase is expected to increase the company’s share of the remediation market.

Fluor Corp. broadened its involvement in the environmental cleanup business Tuesday with a deal to buy controlling interest in one of the country’s largest environmental consulting firms.

Fluor said that its Fluor Daniel construction services subsidiary will pay $33.4 million to acquire 54.5% of Groundwater Technology Inc., a Norwood, Mass., company with worldwide employment of about 1,300 and annual sales of $178 million.

If the deal is completed as anticipated by March, the publicly traded company will be renamed Fluor Daniel/GTI Inc. and will operate as a Massachusetts-based subsidiary of Fluor Daniel.

Separately, Fluor Daniel paid $1.65 million Tuesday for options that expire in December 1998, to acquire an additional 1.37 million shares of Fluor Daniel/GTI at $17 each.

With the 4.4 million-share purchase announced Tuesday, Fluor’s interest in the company would ultimately be boosted to 62.9%.

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Analysts called the deal a small but important step for Irvine-based Fluor.

“It will position Fluor more deeply into the environmental remediation market, which is where we will be seeing all the money spent in the next few years,” said D. Cotton Swindell, an industry analyst with Baltimore investment bank Alex. Brown & Sons.

Fluor said it also will contribute a small portion of its Fluor Daniel Environmental Services subsidiary’s business to the new Fluor Daniel/GTI Inc.

The principal contribution, which accounted for about $36 million of Fluor Corp.’s $8.5 billion in revenue last year, is the general contract for the federal government’s Fernald uranium processing plant cleanup project in Ohio.

A larger portion of Fluor’s environmental business, accounting for $270 million last year, will remain with the company and will be combined into a new unit to be called Fluor Daniel Environmental Solutions.

In addition to the cash from Fluor, Groundwater Technology shareholders will receive a distribution of $26.65 million in cash from their company’s coffers, for a total cash payment of $60 million.

They also will receive a 45.5% interest in the new company in exchange for their Groundwater Technology shares.

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“This is a good fit for both companies,” Swindell said, adding that forming a separate publicly traded company to handle the new business “is not that far of a departure from what Fluor has been doing in other markets, particularly internationally.”

The structure of the deal leaves Fluor in control with the ability to go to the public investment market to raise operating funds.

If the business is successful, Fluor has options to bolster its ownership position.

If it doesn’t work out, the initial investment “isn’t significant exposure for Fluor,” Swindell said.