SPX, a Fortune500 company based in North Carolina, said organic revenue fell 0.5% but income from acquisitions grew by 11%. Currency fluctuations also caused a 3.4% decrease in revenue.

Margins in the third quarter were down from 11.8% to 10.7% with 77 basis points of dilution due to the £750m purchase of Glasgow-based ClydeUnion last year from Jim McColl's Clyde Blowers empire.

SPX said $800,000 of purchase accounting charges relating to the amortisation of the value of backlogs it had acquired at ClydeUnion also affected margins.

Net cash dropped from $85.8m to $52.2m, with SPX blaming higher pension costs, milestone cash receipts for large projects at its thermal equipment and services arm plus investments in working capital in Scotland.

Christopher Kearney, chairman and chief executive at SPX, said: "Total revenue came in lighter than we had anticipated, partly due to continued challenges in the European economic environment, customer and execution delays on projects at ClydeUnion, and some areas of softness in Asia Pacific.

"We continue to make progress on the integration of ClydeUnion and we are targeting a further increase in ClydeUnion's fourth quarter profitability."

In May this year, unions said SPX was planning to make more than 80 redundancies among the ClydeUnion workforce.