Carillion collapse: Picking up the pieces

CARILLION, one of the largest UK contracting firms and a major outsourcing contractor for government projects, went into liquidation last month. Unusually, it was not placed in administration first, indicating a massive hole in its net assets. Two of the Big Four accounting firms (PwC and EY) turned down the administrators' job when they realised the company would have insufficient assets to pay their fees.

This is a headlong plunge into chaos for what had been regarded as a safe pair of hands.

Carillion was demerged from the Tarmac Group in 1999 and set about expanding its services from construction and civil engineering into a variety of other businesses, notably public-private partnerships (PPPs) with government bodies under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).