Carillion going bust

  • Thread starter Thread starter worsleyweb
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TCIB said:
You know this stuff well. What are the chances anything will actually happen to any effect do you think?

Every time some dodgy finances on a huge scale comes to light they say "we will investigate" but generally they find nothing or it just fizzles out. That i find really annoying.
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What will happen is that the under funded, under resourced dti will not have sufficient evidence to build a public prosecution case on, and creditors will not want to gamble a civil case on litigation risk. So fuck all will actually happen despite the entire business community knowing that Carrillion have been shagged for years.
 
SWP's back said:
Not half as much cheer as it brings to my wife.
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Really? Has she never seen my profile?....

Chris-Hemsworth-550x309.jpg
 
Those hoping for an investigation into this i wouldn't hold your breath and i really do feel for the millions who will be affected by this, but the Chairman of Carillion, Phillip Green has friends in very high places including the Royal Family.

This one will be swept under the carpet and the rich will be unaffected while the working class will be brought to its knees again.

Oh and read into it what you will but Phillip Green became Chairman in 2014, 6 mobths before the 2015 timeline of when apparently the government knew of the losses.

Really doesnt sit right with me.
 
bluegirl74 said:
What will happen is that the under funded, under resourced dti will not have sufficient evidence to build a public prosecution case on, and creditors will not want to gamble a civil case on litigation risk. So fuck all will actually happen despite the entire business community knowing that Carrillion have been shagged for years.
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Thank you for putting it better than myself. This stuff does wind me up i can't deny that. If the setup to do stuff can't do stuff, then it is useless but no bugger seems to ever change stuff. We were promised wholesale reform and more transparency in government after the expenses scandal, another thing that never happened.
 
Blue Maverick said:
No good if that 9% disappears into some execs yacht as he sails into the sunset
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True, but that doesn't often happen and cannot happen at all with most company pensions these days. Typically pensions are money purchase schemes and the money is investsd with Standard Life, or Aviva or whoever. In this case it's your money and cannot be taken by your employer. Moreover it's usually protected by the FSA guarantees.

So, as I said, if you employer offers you free money like this, you'd in all normal circumstances be bonkers to say no thanks.
 
aguero93:20 said:
Fuck all most likely because KPMG are one of the big 5 and to call their audits into question would create utter chaos throughout the economy, they're "too big to fail" a few people there will lose their jobs and they'll get a small fine, after making the rest of us look like cunts. The directors? Probably the standard multi year ban from being on the board of any company, jail time is rare.
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You seem unable to contemplate that sometimes businesses just fail. Either by bad management decisions or adverse market conditions or whatever.

Contrary to what the lefties on here are desperate to try to infer - since it suits their lefty agenda that all business is bad and the wonderful, marvellous state should run everything - not all commercial business failures are because the management are incompetent crooks with their snouts in the trough.
 
Chippy_boy said:
True, but that doesn't often happen and cannot happen at all with most company pensions these days. Typically pensions are money purchase schemes and the money is investsd with Standard Life, or Aviva or whoever. In this case it's your money and cannot be taken by your employer. Moreover it's usually protected by the FSA guarantees.

So, as I said, if you employer offers you free money like this, you'd in all normal circumstances be bonkers to say no thanks.
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I understand what you’re saying mate but recently we’ve had BHS, toys r us and now this I always remember what Murdoch did as well. My pension is in the public sector and that’s been screwed as well but I’m lucky enough it’s not done that much damage unlike many others. Honestly if I was younger and wanted to choose my retirement time I’d buy houses.
 
Chippy_boy said:
You seem unable to contemplate that sometimes businesses just fail. Either by bad management decisions or adverse market conditions or whatever.

Contrary to what the lefties on here are desperate to try to infer - since it suits their lefty agenda that all business is bad and the wonderful, marvellous state should run everything - not all commercial business failures are because the management are incompetent crooks with their snouts in the trough.
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You seem unable to comprehend that the signs have been there of this happening for more than two and a half years and in that time period KPMG would have signed off on a full audit twice, the last time shortly before profits had to be drastically written back due to being falsely stated. Ten months on from KPMG confirming them as a healthy and going concern for a minimum of 3 years they're being liquidated. That's either incompetence or willful misconduct on their behalf, it's cost smaller companies and contractors over a billion, as a result many will be driven to the wall. If a smaller auditing firm did that they'd be wound up.
 
c6% of all businesses fail on an annual basis. Whether by poor management, sheer bad luck or something in between.

But more could have been done here to protect stakeholders (creditors / employees / supply chain and shareholders). That said, and I know it will be an unpopular point of view, but just as any and all of those parties could have done better due diligence and mitigated their losses.
 
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Chippy_boy said:
True, but that doesn't often happen and cannot happen at all with most company pensions these days. Typically pensions are money purchase schemes and the money is investsd with Standard Life, or Aviva or whoever. In this case it's your money and cannot be taken by your employer. Moreover it's usually protected by the FSA guarantees.

So, as I said, if you employer offers you free money like this, you'd in all normal circumstances be bonkers to say no thanks.
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The Carillion Schemes (13 of them) were defined benefit schemes and had a deficit of £587m which is small fry compared with some of the larger underfunded schemes like BA, Shell, BHS, Barclays and a hundred or so others.
 
Thank God we don't have a Marxist in No 10! I remember the winter of discontent, held to ransom we were, blah, blah, blah, ...

Taxpayers to foot £200bn bill for PFI contracts – audit office..

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...oot-200bn-bill-for-pfi-contracts-audit-office

Cost of privately financing projects ‘can be 40% higher’ than using public money...

Taxpayers will be forced to hand over nearly £200bn to contractors under private finance deals for at least 25 years, according to a report by Whitehall’s spending watchdog.

In the wake of the collapse of public service provider Carillion, the National Audit Office found little evidence that government investment in more than 700 existing public-private projects has delivered financial benefits.

The cost of privately financing public projects can be 40% higher than relying solely upon government money, auditors found.

...........................

Blows the few bad apples argument clean out the water, today it's Carillion, next month? Next year? It'll be some other corporate monster and the apologists will reel out the bad management and poor oversight bullshit argument all over again. But even if these corporate blobs, that deliver so much in the public sphere, escape Carillion's fate, this is clearly a fundamentally flawed mechanism for delivering public projects. Why is it that there are those in here who would do anything other than admit that strategically, structurally, this is the wrong way to go? It makes no sense, even for the petty, Pounds, Shillings and Pence small c Conservatives.

Still, there's no alternative :-(
 
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aguero93:20 said:
You seem unable to comprehend that the signs have been there of this happening for more than two and a half years and in that time period KPMG would have signed off on a full audit twice, the last time shortly before profits had to be drastically written back due to being falsely stated. Ten months on from KPMG confirming them as a healthy and going concern for a minimum of 3 years they're being liquidated. That's either incompetence or willful misconduct on their behalf, it's cost smaller companies and contractors over a billion, as a result many will be driven to the wall. If a smaller auditing firm did that they'd be wound up.
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It's not the auditor's job to review or decide whether business decisions make sense, whether deals are likely to be profitable or not or forecasts are accurate. Their job is primarily to check that the numbers add up (literally) and that the line items contributing to the p&l and balance sheet are genuine.

Indeed no-one can prove whether a forecast is accurate or not; it's a forecast. If a business predicts a certain level of cash flow based on sales projections and the sales aren't achieved, the numbers will end up different from forecast. How is an audit firm supposed to determine the competency of sales teams, for example? It's not their remit.

And businesses making losses is a perfectly acceptable business strategy if it's in order to capture market share or during a period of strong investment, for example. It's far too simplistic to say they were losing money and therefore there was obviously a showstopping problem. UK accounting standards is clear that the auditors should take into account the relevant facts and circumstances known at the time of audit and that "therefore judgments that were reasonable at that time may be inconsistent with future events and circumstances that may cause an entity to cease to continue as a going concern."

To imply that KPMG - KPMG FFS - are in some way in collusion or incompetent is pretty ridiculous imo.
 
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SWP's back said:
The Carillion Schemes (13 of them) were defined benefit schemes and had a deficit of £587m which is small fry compared with some of the larger underfunded schemes like BA, Shell, BHS, Barclays and a hundred or so others.
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I know.

The statement was made that I don't know why anyone would join a company pension scheme these days, and I answered why. Most give you free money and most are not defined benefit schemes subject to these risks. That's all I was saying.
 
bluegirl74 said:
That said, and I know it will be an unpopular point of view, but just as any and all of those parties could have done better due diligence and mitigated their losses.
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Correct.

I've no idea whether the Carillon directors are crooks or incompetent or whether their auditors are. I merely state that I think the latter is unlikely, and about their directors and business plans,I have no clue.

But the shareholders obviously saw issues, hence the shares in steep decline since 2014.
 
Chippy_boy said:
Correct.

I've no idea whether the Carillon directors are crooks or incompetent or whether their auditors are. I merely state that I think the latter is unlikely, and about their directors and business plans,I have no clue.

But the shareholders obviously saw issues, hence the shares in steep decline since 2014.
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How would it show up accounts?

Would it just appear under debts (or whatever they're called)? It seems inconceivable that the accountant/auditor would lie, so the alternative would be that debts weren't disclosed to the auditors. Are there any other options?
 
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