Bush victory brings relief for Halliburton shareholders

Halliburton shareholders have shaken off the shadows of a raft of investigations into their company's practice in Iraq to embrace a new four-year term of George Bush and Halliburton's old boss Dick Cheney in the White House.

Voters ignored criticism from Senator John Kerry and other Democrats during the election campaign which charged Cheney with favouritism over the $7 billion (3.8 billion pounds) in no-bid contracts Halliburton, through its KBR engineering and construction unit, to run virtually everything in post-war Iraq from US soldiers' meals to the oil infrastructure.

Halliburton shares rose 7 percent to hit three-year highs along with stocks in other oil-related firms expected to be big beneficiaries of the return of the two ex-oilmen to the top US jobs.

While Pentagon auditors have found evidence of possible overcharging on the part of KBR, Halliburton predicted the inquiries would be quietly dropped if Bush won.

Such a move would result in howls of protest from the Democrats but, in their current demoralised condition, a resurgent Bush is expected to shrug off complaints easily.

The Halliburton issue failed to gain traction in the Presidential race despite the US Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting official last week calling the no-tender deal the worst case of contracting abuse she had seen. Bunnatine Greenhouse said: "It was misconduct, and part of the misconduct was blatant."

US auditors have also accused KBR of being unable to account for more than a third of the items it handled in Kuwait.