Carillion oh verge of collapse

[Auntie Andy]

Their CEO's basic pay increased from £790k to £1.5m in the five years he has been there and last March they paid out a record dividend on 18.4p a share. Part of the CEO's additional bonus was based on appointing a new Finance Director to improve leadership yet one year later they have unsustainable debts and a massive pension shortfall.

What I can't understand is that the government has a defined IT strategy of seeking to work with small to medium enterprises rather than giants like IBM and Accenture to lower dependency on high margin major businesses yet at the same time when it comes to infrastructure and outsourcing projects a large proportion of the work ends up with the same small number of companies.

Carillion may now be considered too big to fail and may need state intervention or if this is considered to be too risky politically then the impact will be most harshly felt on its workers and those in its pension fund.

It’s absolutely disgusting that this is continually allowed to happen. Capitalism stinks, the working man will once again be shafted and the rich walk away unscathed. But it’s OK just privatise everything and all will be OK.

[Auntie Andy]

So let a private company bid for work - fail and go bust or let a Govt nationalised dept - run it in the same way - and still make the same loss. If you want to protect us - the tax payer - then you would choose the former not the latter.

The Govt wont make a loss - it is the banks , shareholders, pension funds that will take the hit if it goes bust. All that will happen to the Govt is that another company will bid for the existing work..

The 'rich' wont walk away unscathed - they (the shareholders + pensions funds) are the ones who will get hit.

What??? As pointed out earlier in the thread “Their CEO's basic pay increased from £790k to £1.5m in the five years he has been there and last March they paid out a record dividend on 18.4p a share. Part of the CEO's additional bonus was based on appointing a new Finance Director to improve leadership yet one year later they have unsustainable debts and a massive pension shortfall”.

Great!

[cyril evans awaydays]

What??? As pointed out earlier in the thread “Their CEO's basic pay increased from £790k to £1.5m in the five years he has been there and last March they paid out a record dividend on 18.4p a share. Part of the CEO's additional bonus was based on appointing a new Finance Director to improve leadership yet one year later they have unsustainable debts and a massive pension shortfall”.

Great!

To be fair to Mambo I think he was making a slightly different point that if Carillion's contract for HS2 let's say was taken into public ownership then the taxpayer could face an equal or greater bill by a combination of setting up the service and perhaps running it less efficiently so the cost is higher. I was highlighting the way that Carillion seemed to be rewarding its senior management and shareholders for what has turned out to be a failing company. You don't build up the level of debt and pension shortfall you highlight over a single financial year.

I don't buy the argument that a public sector body would have made the same loss. Carillion seems to have suffered through a combination of mismanagement by over-borrowing to support its over-rapid expansion via public sector contracts in a number of sectors, some of which they seem to have badly priced. Even at low interest rates it has to service the interest on that debt which it seems unable to manage.

Mambo mentions another company picking up the slack. I read that on HS2 which was won by a consortium including Carillion that the bid explicitly caters for the other winning tenderers covering the gap should one member drop out. It will be interesting to see how this pans out in practice. Carillion had released a major profits warning just before they were announced as one of the successful tenderers for HS2 by the Transport Department so don't be surprised to hear that Chris Grayling is on an overseas trip next week if Carillion goes belly-up.

[Auntie Andy]

Why are you so aggressive ? , I wasnt talking about the CEO - if a company wants to pay their CEO x amount and dividends of xx in the £ - that is entirely their responsibility and their decision - if the board and shareholders arent happy they can get him removed. The main financial 'losers' in Carillion going bust will be the shareholders of the company - and any other companies that are owed money - if they go into liquidation that is.

My point being that as a tax payer - we would be far better that a private company went bust - than get a Govt 'nationalised' dept to implement the projects - just my opinion having worked in both public and private sectors. The Govt can sue / penalise a private company for not delivering on time / to budget , they cant exactly fine themselves or take themselves to court for non delivery of their own project.

Cyril - I know there are contingencies in place on the HS2 contract for this eventuality - how that will work out in practice - Im not sure. I agree with you Carillion's issues seem to be from trying to grow too quickly, paying a high dividend in order to encourage equity investment perhaps - and trying to keep the pension fund afloat, a govt run organisation would have the same pension problem.

I wonder if the Govt are planning a network rail type scenario for Carillion. I think (ironically) under EU law all major infrastructure projects must be put out to tender for anyone to bid for. "Anyone" being private companies or state owned companies.

My mate at Carillion on the HS2 project isnt that concerned - the work still needs to get done - so in all probability he will end up working for the new contractor.

Apologies for sounding aggressive, I don’t intend it at you. I just get so angry at the working man continually getting shafted.

This article details how Carillion bosses instead of looking after their company, staff and their pensions, instead protected their bonuses despite knowing the company was in trouble.

http://www.constructionenquirer.com/...ses-protected/

[Eric Cartman]

But no one is getting 'shafted' as you so eloquently put it - apart from the shareholders (those shareholders being banks, pension funds, and private investors). The 'working man' will still be doing his job - but probably for another company very soon. The contract of work still needs to be completed, another company will come in and 'employ' those who are working on Govt contracts. That same company will then apply for new Govt tenders as well , I would have thought

I read the report - and it is simple, the shareholders will raise a no confidence vote in the board to get rid of the chairman / CEO / finance director and anyone else who may have been trying to do something dodgy.
When the answer to any question is more Govt - then usually the wrong question is being asked - in my opinion.
Although in Arriva trains Wales (German owned) I think the WAG idea of attempting to run the franchise themselves will be an interesting experiment and one worth trying.

I pay into a pension scheme, I imagine most on here do. I pay tax, I imagine most on here do. The tax I pay goes to pay for projects like HS2, my pension contributions may well also get invested in a company like this. So I am potentially part-funding the CEO's payrise twice. He drives off into the sunset with his bags of dosh after doing a shitty job and my pittance pension takes another hit.

Does this really look like an example of a situation that doesn't affect the little people?

[cyril evans awaydays]

I pay into a pension scheme, I imagine most on here do. I pay tax, I imagine most on here do. The tax I pay goes to pay for projects like HS2, my pension contributions may well also get invested in a company like this. So I am potentially part-funding the CEO's payrise twice. He drives off into the sunset with his bags of dosh after doing a shitty job and my pittance pension takes another hit.

Does this really look like an example of a situation that doesn't affect the little people?

Bit too late. The CEO who appears mainly responsible for this was removed in July. Having read a bit more about this it appears that a lot of the issues derive from Carillion's valuation of the work on its books. In mid-2017 it wrote down the value by around £850m with a lot of the problems being on the non-UK side of the business in the Middle-east. This followed a "review" by the new Finance Director. Though as the new Finance Director was promoted from his role as Carillion's Financial Controller then you might have expected a bit more insight before this bombshell hit. The company would have been paying dividends and raising capital on the back of the original valuation so when that folded they have been in fire-fighting mode ever since with an interim and then another new Chief Executive appointed in November.

The old CEO probably cashed in his shares, he had 250k of them, at a far higher value than they are today and would have benefitted from the dividends paid on the overvalued company at the end of its 2016 financial year.