Kritiken från FI: SHB missade Carillions storkonkurs

Carillion plc, prior to its ongoing liquidation, was a British multinational facilities management and construction services company headquartered in Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom. Carillion was created in July 1999, following a demerger from Tarmac. The company experienced financial difficulties in 2017, and went into compulsory liquidation on 15 January 2018, the most drastic procedure in UK insolvency law, with liabilities of almost £7 billion. Before its liquidation, it had grown through a series of acquisitions to become the second largest construction company in the United Kingdom, was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and had some 43,000 employees (around 19,000 of them in the United Kingdom). In the United Kingdom, the insolvency has caused project shutdowns and delays in the UK and overseas (PFI projects in Ireland have been suspended, while four of Carillion's Canadian businesses sought legal bankruptcy protection), job losses (in Carillion – 2,303 UK redundancies up to 21 May 2018 – and its suppliers), financial losses to joint venture partners and lenders, and potential financial losses to Carillion's 30,000 suppliers and 28,500 pensioners. It has also led to questions and parliamentary inquiries about the conduct of the firm's directors, its auditors, the Financial Reporting Council and The Pensions Regulator, and about the UK Government's relationships with major suppliers working on Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes and other privatised outsourcing of public services. It also prompted legislation proposals to reform industry payment practices, and consultations on new government procurement processes to promote good payment practices. The final report of a Parliamentary inquiry said Carillion's collapse was "a story of recklessness, hubris and greed, its business model was a relentless dash for cash", and accused its directors of misrepresenting the financial realities of the business. "Carillion was unsustainable," the report said. "The mystery is not that it collapsed, but that it lasted so long." The report's recommendations included regulatory reforms and a possible break-up of the Big Four audit firms.