Carrilion in trouble

[Brave Fart]

crankedup said:

Another swift kick in the bks for the small people owed money by Carillion. Shareholders sucked in with the lure of big divi’s, still that’s all part of the game, it’s the small businesses that are hit hardest. Carillion, st from end to end.

Hold on a minute, it's the shareholders who have seen their shares become worthless! Yes there is pain for creditor suppliers, but they could have taken out insurance against default if they were that worried. If you're going to feel sorry for anyone, it should not be investors or businesses that knowingly took risks, it should be the employees who've lost their jobs.

[gooner1]

Smiler. said:

"PWC had every incentive to milk the Carillion cow dry. Then, when Carillion finally collapsed, PWC adroitly re-emerged as butcher, packaging up joints of the fallen beast to be flogged off. For this they are handsomely rewarded by the taxpayer.

They claim to be experts in every aspects of company management. They're certainly expert in ensuring they get their cut at every stage."

Who knew?


source

Thanks for that.
Re Frank Fields, not sure I understood his question during PMQT today, did he make a reference to somthing akin to the Carillion saga about to visit on GKN shortly?

[FN2TypeR]

crankedup said:

Another swift kick in the bks for the small people owed money by Carillion. Shareholders sucked in with the lure of big divi’s, still that’s all part of the game, it’s the small businesses that are hit hardest. Carillion, st from end to end.

How many of them were sucked in by promises of guaranteed returns?

There might be a case to answer if that happened, if not, it's tough titty really isn't it?

[Smiler.]

£20.4 million to report after 8 weeks "yeah, it's all gone"

Priceless.

[ClaphamGT3]

Brave Fart said:

PWC weren't directly involved with Carillion, the auditors were KPMG. PWC were advising the pensions regulator on how to protect the pension scheme, so how Frank Field can say they "milked Carillion dry" escapes me.
As for PWC's fees, the law says that that the insolvency practitioners get paid first - otherwise they wouldn't do it. And if you want highly experienced accountants to sort out the mess, its going to cost.

Awful isn't it, when highly qualified professionals get paid as prescribed by law..............

How very dare you come here talking your la-di-da sense....

[Brave Fart]

Smiler. said:

£20.4 million to report after 8 weeks "yeah, it's all gone"

Priceless.

Ah, we have an insolvency expert in the house!
Or maybe you're being serious as opposed to.....pithy.
Look, PWC have a huge task on their hands - for which they'll be well paid, granted. But it's got to be done by experts, agreed?

[gooner1]

Brave Fart said:

Ah, we have an insolvency expert in the house!
Or maybe you're being serious as opposed to.....pithy.
Look, PWC have a huge task on their hands - for which they'll be well paid, granted. But it's got to be done by experts, agreed?

Should a Company , that were acting as advisors to a company before the st hit
the fan, be so intricately involved in it's final carve up?

[eccles]

Brave Fart said:

Smiler. said:

£20.4 million to report after 8 weeks "yeah, it's all gone"

Priceless.

Ah, we have an insolvency expert in the house!
Or maybe you're being serious as opposed to.....pithy.
Look, PWC have a huge task on their hands - for which they'll be well paid, granted. But it's got to be done by experts, agreed?

I love the way you keep calling them the experts, yet these 'experts' seem to regularly sign off the books of these companies as healthy only for them to fail a short time after!

[ClaphamGT3]

gooner1 said:

Brave Fart said:

Ah, we have an insolvency expert in the house!
Or maybe you're being serious as opposed to.....pithy.
Look, PWC have a huge task on their hands - for which they'll be well paid, granted. But it's got to be done by experts, agreed?

PWC were advising the Carillon pension trustees and the Govt on mitigating their risk in the event of Carillion's failure. They were not, in the run-up to the failure, advising Carillion's on anything.


Should a Company , that were acting as advisors to a company before the st hit
the fan, be so intricately involved in it's final carve up?

[Burwood]

Alpinestars said:

Burwood said:

Alpinestars said:

Unexpected Item In The Bagging Area said:

£12.5/week comes to £650k/year which is the average for a PwC partner’s pay.

Edit: too slow!

Correct. I should know

You at Embankment Place, Alpine?

LB. I think I got a mention at the select committee hearing. It was my rate that they referred to uch:

Are you at PwC?

Used to be, yes.

[Dr Jekyll]

eccles said:

I love the way you keep calling them the experts, yet these 'experts' seem to regularly sign off the books of these companies as healthy only for them to fail a short time after!

Their job is to say whether the books are fiddled, not to predict how long the company is going to last.

[AB]

Quite sad seeing the effects on the ground.

A part of Carillion that was allegedly doing OK are/were in the office next door to ours. The office has now got for sale signs all over it and the car park is getting quieter and quieter with only a couple of people there most days.

That said, quite happy they're no longer taking our parking spaces or parking in theirs so badly we can't get a car in. Parking lessons were obviously not provided and actually I always thought that if people were that sloppy on things like that then no wonder...

[gooner1]

ClaphamGT3 said:

gooner1 said:

Brave Fart said:

Ah, we have an insolvency expert in the house!
Or maybe you're being serious as opposed to.....pithy.
Look, PWC have a huge task on their hands - for which they'll be well paid, granted. But it's got to be done by experts, agreed?

PWC were advising the Carillon pension trustees and the Govt on mitigating their risk in the event of Carillion's failure. They were not, in the run-up to the failure, advising Carillion's on anything.


Should a Company , that were acting as advisors to a company before the st hit
the fan, be so intricately involved in it's final carve up?

Thanks, I was fully aware of Brave Farts post.

However, are we to believe that these highly trained, very expensive Govt and pension trustee
advisors, while working on mitigating the risks ,in the event of a Carillion failure,neither gleaned or knew anything about a possible future Carillion failure? A failure that coincidentally, as we now all know, astonishingly happened. Were there no warnings given to their
Paymasters?

[Digga]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Indeed. I am also reminded of previous, similar conflicts of interest: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[Alpinestars]

Dr Jekyll said:

eccles said:

I love the way you keep calling them the experts, yet these 'experts' seem to regularly sign off the books of these companies as healthy only for them to fail a short time after!

Their job is to say whether the books are fiddled, not to predict how long the company is going to last.

Not quite right. Broadly, Auditors report on the viability of the business for the foreseeable future (undefined, but is read as at least 12 months).

[Burwood]

Strictly speaking an Auditor is to provide reasonable assurance that the Statements are free from material error or fraud. The key being material. They must also obtain sufficient evidence as to whether managements use of the Going Concern assumption is appropriate (i.e not fall on its face in the next 12 months).

[Alpinestars]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I'm sure that's a fact.

[sidicks]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

People ‘usually’ makes statements like this without evidence or rationale.

[Digga]

Come on, it's not like we haven't seen exactly this sort of conflict actually happen (in a huge way) before is it? I'm thinking now of the ratings agencies and the subprime mortgages CDOs and CDSs.

Then there is the fact big UK accountancy looks a lot like a very tidy cartel...

[Brave Fart]

gooner1 said:

However, are we to believe that these highly trained, very expensive Govt and pension trustee
advisors, while working on mitigating the risks ,in the event of a Carillion failure,neither gleaned or knew anything about a possible future Carillion failure? A failure that coincidentally, as we now all know, astonishingly happened. Were there no warnings given to their
Paymasters?

Perhaps they suspected that Carillion wasn't viable, or maybe Carillion management convinced them otherwise, or perhaps Carillion's management lied to everyone - who knows? Certainly not me or you gooner1.
It's not relevant, because PWC's terms of engagement weren't "send up a red flare if needed!", but were "if Carillion fails, how might the pension fund be protected?" (BHS showed us how wrong it can go).
You're targeting the wrong people gooner1. Or could it be that you (like Eccles, Tonker, and Crankedup) misunderstand the role of both PWC and KPMG, and/or don't understand insolvency law, and/or are simply prejudiced against "fat cat accountants"? Probably not, you're a sharp mind I'm sure, but there is a lot of uninformed biased guff being spouted on this thread.