The board of Carillion was in crisis as early as last May, according to minutes of a directors’ meeting during which a senior lawyer warned them that they may be guilty of misleading the stock market. Yesterday it emerged, in disclosures from the parliamentary inquiry into how Carillion came to enter compulsory liquidation last month, that at a meeting of the board on May 9 last year the company’s accounting of several key contracts “seemed to ring alarm bells and raise red flags”. Carillion is a giant outsourcing and construction contractor that went bust owing £1 billion, putting the future of 20,000 employees in doubt and leaving its pension fund in special measures. Its failure has placed question marks over public sector contracts in hospitals,…

Source: The Times February 27, 2018 00:00 UTC