Carillion go down the shitter [split topic]

[greencalx]

Apologies for the excessive bump, but I couldn't think of anything witty enough to say about Carillion going down the shitter to warrant a new thread, so here it is.

Does it make sense to put all your eggs in one basket? Does it? Does it? DOES IT?

[Dr Syntax Head]

What if you only have one basket aaahhhh AAAAHHHH

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Interesting which firms the government step in to save and which they don't

[TrenterPercenter]

Apologies for the excessive bump, but I couldn't think of anything witty enough to say about Carillion going down the shitter to warrant a new thread, so here it is.

Tbf they were never the same after fish left.

[canadagoose]

Tbf they were never the same after fish left.

Beat me to it, you sod.

[Quote]

Good that our government was willing to still give Carillion lucrative public contracts even when it was  obvious the company was barely hanging on to solvency...

Maybe there's some kind of magic money tree we can use to scrape together the funds required to bail out these fine venture capitalists and socially valuable wealth creators?

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

Oh most definitely.

[greencalx]

They've gone into liquidation. Another victory for the private sector there.

[gepree]

What is it with directors called Philip Green?

There's this one from Carillion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Nevill_Green

And of course this one from BHS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Green

[steve98]

Once again failing to learn the lessons of history.

Here's a third Philip Green: https://www.facebook.com/luc.dathug?fref=search (another shyster).

[biggytitbo]

This is a private company so can it go bust and the shareholders and directors and investors lose all the money please, rather than taxpayers.


Cheers.

[im barry bethel]

This is a private company so can it go bust and the shareholders and directors and investors lose all the money please, rather than taxpayers.


Cheers.

The pension liabilities are taken over by the PPF

[buzby]

Our company is in a joint venture with them, doing the FTTC installations for BT. Presumably we are going to have to bail out their 60% of the JV to keep the contract going. Thanks lads.

There's also the part-finished replacement for the Liverpool Royal hospital, which was so far behind schedule (it was supposed to be handed over in March last year) that they wouldn't even give an estimate of when it would be completed. They were also the maintenance contractor for the existing hospital. The NHS Trust is probably going to have to find another construction company to complete the work now.

[Absorb the anus burn]

A fucking tarmac company who (thanks to neoliberal capitalism cronyism) got to provide school meals, run prisons and bite off chunks of the NHS.

[Buelligan]

Amazing isn't it - how thatcherite letting of the Market find the best solution achieves value for money for the taxpayer?  And now the taxpayer can bail out banks that have taken a risky punt knowing that if it gets too risky, the good old public purse will save them from any unpleasantness.

Because a privately run company can do everything a civil servant can do, plus pay dividends to shareholders and borrow commercially and pay their executives handsomely - so that they get the best people for the job.

Support services company Carillion also had a shareholder rebellion on its hands at its AGM on May 4. Nearly one-fifth of investors voted against the remuneration report, which increased the chairman's salary from £193,000 to £215,000.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/04/shareholder-spring-ii-which-ceo-pay-packets-have-sparked-investo/a-carillion-worker/

If they forget about their pension liabilities or safeguarding the employment of tens of thousands of little people, the taxpayer can pick up the tab - because the Market is always right.

[Paul Calf]

The 21st Century feels more and more like the end of Fight Club - penniless in a gleaming glass tower [spoiler:having just killed our imaginary friend] while the artifacts of Western civilisation crumble around us.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1d5VvCa8Fo

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Carillon, Capita, Serco type things are are beyond specialist service providers as they get into all sorts of things, making them just proxy government departments handed work on an ideological confidence that because they are private they will do a better job. I fail to see what makes them so much better, why Carillon are so great at catering and tarmac?! This isn't even a privatisation ethos, it's just a proxy bureaucracy, a government with a different label, a government being paid to be a government on our behalf.

But if the price of steel sinks for 18 months then the government won't keep those going until the markets go back to normal. Fuck Port Talbot, Redcar, Scunthorpe, etc eh? They wonder why these places voted UKIP..

[checkoutgirl]

This is a private company so can it go bust and the shareholders and directors and investors lose all the money please, rather than taxpayers.

First of all the directors will most likely hang onto the payments and bonuses they were given.

Second if the company are doing key services that can't easily be covered by an alternative that complicates the matter.

[biggytitbo]

Aren't these firms ultimately an elaborate scam to try and defer government expenditure? Can kicking exercises with the bonus of some lovely revolving door, crony-capitalism.


If it's for investment, print it. Cut out the piggies in the trough all together.

[biggytitbo]

First of all the directors will most likely hang onto the payments and bonuses they were given.

Second if the company are doing key services that can't easily be covered by an alternative that complicates the matter.

Of course the whole thing is structured and wired together so it can't fail without blowing up, and so we have to step in and bail it out.

[Buelligan]

Carillon, Capita, Serco type things are are beyond specialist service providers as they get into all sorts of things, making them just proxy government departments handed work on an ideological confidence that because they are private they will do a better job. I fail to see what makes them so much better, why Carillon are so great at catering and tarmac?! This isn't even a privatisation ethos, it's just a proxy bureaucracy, a government with a different label, a government being paid to be a government on our behalf.

But if the price of steel sinks for 18 months then the government won't keep those going until the markets go back to normal. Fuck Port Talbot, Redcar, Scunthorpe, etc eh? They wonder why these places voted UKIP..

SERCO, for instance, that's an interesting organisation to think about, current CEO is Rupert Soames, brother of ex-Conservative MP Nicholas Soames (chairman of the private security contractor Aegis Defence Services that donated over £1M to his local party, £100K to him, as well as being apparently friendly towards people like Mugabe) and grandson of reknowned British Machiavelli, Winston Churchill.  Rupe is also nephew of Conservative Defence Secretary, Duncan Sandys. 

SERCO was first listed on the LSE in 1988, right at the height of Thatcher's sell-off of British publicly-owned businesses.  It would be interesting to know how many bids they put in for those, how many were successful, when they started nosing the trough.  They were very lucky, one might think luck like that was almost spooky, I couldn't possibly comment.

[Paul Calf]

Has there ever been anyone good called Rupert? I know everyone's thinking of Rupert the Bear but his slavish obedience to authority always made me very suspicious.

[Ian Drunken Smurf]

Who wants to be a Carillionaire? Are there any self-servatives who have been trousering cash from them?

[Ian Drunken Smurf]

Has there ever been anyone good called Rupert? I know everyone's thinking of Rupert the Bear but his slavish obedience to authority always made me very suspicious.

Rupert Allason? For publicly being a rogue?

[gmoney]

Has there ever been anyone good called Rupert? I know everyone's thinking of Rupert the Bear but his slavish obedience to authority always made me very suspicious.

Rupert Pupkin did a pretty good monologue in the end.

[Buelligan]

Who wants to be a Carillionaire? Are there any self-servatives who have been trousering cash from them?

Sally Morgan serves as Senior Independent Non-Executive Director of the Company. Baroness Sally Morgan of Huyton is a Non-Executive Director of Dixons Carphone plc and Countryside Properties PLC. From 2001 to 2005, she was director of government relations at 10 Downing Street. Prior to this, Baroness Morgan was political secretary to the Prime Minister and was appointed Minister for Women and Equalities in 2001. In 2006, she was appointed as a board member of the Olympic Delivery Authority. She was previously Chair of Ofsted and a member of the advisory committee of Virgin Group Holdings Limited. Currently she is Chair of Ambition School Leadership (a UK charity training potential head teachers for challenging schools) and adviser to Ark which runs academies in the UK and works internationally in education. She is Chairman of Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust and Deputy Chairman of the Council of King's College London.

https://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/company-officers/CLLN.L

[MoonDust]

Apparently Carillion clearners on Ariva Rail North have had their fuel cards bounced at petrol stations. One worker filled their entire tank up only to have now no means of paying for the fuel.

As always with these big companies, it is the workers who'll be hit hardest, whilst the bosses face no personal losses. They'll remain rich and go into some other business.

Pisses me off so much when I hear pro-capitalists say it's the CEOs who take the biggest personal risks in businesses therefore their pay is justified (I've literally debated with people who hold this view) when in fact the reality is the opposite; the workers face the biggest risk as they have no control, and one cock up from their boss means they're jobless with no more income whilst their boss is fine and dandy.

The private sector are a load of cunts. As someone pointed out upthread, it's absolutely ludicrous a fucking tarmac company became in charge of school meals and NHS contracts.

[Shit Good Nose]

The private sector are a load of cunts.

Well, they are and they aren't.  They have their place, for sure.  But they definitely shouldn't be handling public sector work.  Every time something like this happens - where a private sector company that has been given public sector works goes out of business, or ends up being massively more expensive, etc etc - I think to myself "perhaps NOW the government will realise that you can't privatise everything, because there are some things that shouldn't be done just to make a profit".  But they never do realise, and I don't think they ever will.

The trouble is, a massive chunk of the voting public don't realise it either.

[Endicott]

It's not the private sector per se. It's government, with its snout in the trough. Back handers. Sealed contracts bids my arse.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I think it's pretty simple. If there isn't a clear market in which companies can compete among each other privately then the conditions for benefits to the consumer don't exist, let alone those for the public at large who are paying tax collectively in exchange for receipt of services - and this is a prime example. All you have is a private company and their elite benefiting from political ideological war that says private = better even if the structure and services are conglomerised so far they are just a mirror/magnet link for what the government could be doing themselves.

The government should be proactively deciding what services must be partly state run to ensure coverage and fair delivery, instead the Tories are all about abdicating state responsibility, as though an individual person with  no connection is responsible for gross mismanagement of a large company.

Horrible free market bullshit run riot, with a dab of libertarianism thrown in.

But it is ok lads because Alan Sugar