The Insolvency Service has launched a legal action to ban eight former Carillion directors.
New business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng gave the go-ahead to the move pursuant to the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986.
The action, which comes three years after the collapse of Carillion in January 2018, follows a report about the conduct of each director submitted by the Official Receiver. Kwarteng decided it would be in the “public interest” that a court makes an order disqualifying the directors.
Among the individuals named are former chairman Philip Green, former chief executive Richard Howson who left the business in 2017, and Keith Cochrane. Two former finance directors – Zafar Khan and Richard Adam – are also named in the action, as are three non-executive directors: Alison Horner, Ceri Powell, and Andrew Dougal.
If the action is successful, the eight individuals could be banned for between two and 15 years each.
An Insolvency Service spokesperson said: “We can confirm that on 12 January 2021 the Secretary of State issued company director disqualification proceedings in the public interest against eight directors and former directors of Carillion.”
Comments
Comments are closed.
What about the auditors. KPMG. were they totally unaware of what was going on in Carillion?
Once found guilty of gross misconduct then you should pay the price by not holding a directorship or any position that you could influence a tender outcome.
Banned from what, exactly???
Its time company directors of any company are held accountable, just in the oast to years I have known directors to take wages knowing that the company can not afford to pay, they borrow from the banks and lie to share holders to fund this activity and when the companies they are directors of finely go into liquidation they walk away smelling of roses and start a new company. Its disgusting how this is allowed to happen using loopholes. I once had a company and only took wages that the company could afford to pay me, the work was plenty and the banks were calling out for me to borrow money and on one occasion because of cash flow the bank manager suggested we borrow £15,000 which I could have quite easily gone, I looked at the long term forecast and at the time it sounded too easy to borrow the money but I new that it was possible that times would get hard, times did get hard and I reduced my wage bill to accommodate the situation but eventually it came to putting the company into liquidation. I could have quit easily borrowed money and continued to pay high wages then put the company into liquidation and walked away smelling of roses because it’s to easy to do this. My old company accountant always used to say to me about the banks etc, “When the sun shines they will give you an umbrella, but when it rains they will take it away”