By its competitors’ reckoning, Dragados’s recklessly low (and sequentially numbered) bid of $1,234,567,890 for the next phase of the California High Speed Rail project may contribute to its financial troubles in the U.S. market.

Still deep in trouble on the East Side Connector tunnel in New York and facing a major hit in Seattle, the big Spanish contractor now has left $500 million on the table in California against an aggressively priced bid by the incumbent contractor.