The company's roots stretch back to May 1911 with the foundation of Sociedad General de Obras y Construcciones Obrascón, S.A. in Bilbao, whose first project was the construction of two
wharfs in the Port of
Lisbon. The company grew over the decades, being acquired first by the
Banco de Bilbao in 1953 and then by
Altos Hornos de Vizcaya 20 years later. Villar turned around the firm's fortunes and it listed on the
Bolsa de Madrid in 1991. On April 16, 2014, OHL lost the largest case for damages in the history of
Gibraltar, having been judged to fail to comply with the terms of a contract to build a tunnel to cross the Gibraltar International Airport runway. In May 2014, Miguel Fraile testified to
Quebec's
Charbonneau Commission that a Quebec-based competitor firm,
SNC-Lavalin (SNC), wanted the business of the
McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) to itself. SNC vice-president Riadh Ben Aissa “started by asking, who am I? Who is OHL? We are nothing. We are nobody. Montreal is SNC’s city, the MUHC is its project” as the corruption inquiry continued its study of the CAD$1.3-billion hospital project. Fraile reported that Ben Aissa told him OHL must withdraw from the bidding, which was set close in March 2010, and that SNC was a “powerful company in Canada," and if OHL dropped out of the bid, the two firms might be able to team up in the future. “He said that if we won the contract, he would make our lives impossible.” OHL did not win the MUHC bid, even though it outbid SNC by $60 million. In 2019, it is being investigated for the alleged payment of irregular commissions by managers of the construction company to municipalities and autonomous communities in exchange for public works awards. In July 2022, the company was fined €21.5 million, along with five other contractors, by the
Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC) for bidding collusion in public tenders for building and civil infrastructure works. ==References==