Its banks have also agreed to provide an additional debt facility of 110 million pounds, said Interserve, which reported its debt increased by almost 26 percent to 631 million pounds last year.

The company said it still faced challenges in several markets in construction and equipment services although its 2018 pretax loss of 111.3 million pounds was smaller than the 244.4 million shortfall it suffered a year earlier.

The company, which employs 68,000 people, maintains eight of Britain's 10 busiest railway stations and cleans thousands of London Underground carriages every evening.

Chief Executive Officer Debbie White is looking to cut costs and move away from low-margin contracts that have hurt the company.

"The business had too much complexity and a high level of organisational inefficiency ... We've had to peel back the layers and make some changes to get to the underlying performance of the business," White told analysts on a call.

Chairman Glyn Barker admitted the company had entered some businesses it should not have done.

Interserve this month struck a rescue deal that would see lenders swap millions of pounds of debt for new shares.

On Wednesday it said those new shares would be priced at 15.3 pence as it aims to raise 435 million pounds in a fully underwritten offering.

The deal, which will involve 19 new shares for every existing share, faces a vote by shareholders on March 15.

Interserve shares closed up about 8.6 percent at 22.48 pence on Wednesday.

However, top shareholder Coltrane Asset Management dismissed the improved offer as "obscene", the Financial Times reported, citing people close to the firm.

Those people, not named in the FT's report, argued that Interserve had failed to provide basic information to shareholders and that it was "not in fact running out of cash".

Coltrane this month called for eight company directors to be replaced but said it supported CEO White.

New York-based Coltrane did not have an immediate comment.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and additional reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; editing by Georgina Prodhan, Jason Neely and Susan Thomas)

By Noor Zainab Hussain