Carillion crisis: Suppliers could get less than 1p in the pound

Creditors of collapsed Carillion could end up with less than a penny in the pound, official court documents revealed on Tuesday.

The revelation comes in a High Court witness statement submitted by the interim chief executive, Keith Cochrane, on the company’s liquidation yesterday and seen by the Standard.

Cochrane’s account of the six-month prelude to the company’s demise also delivers a broadside against the firm’s lenders and reveals that private sector clients were refusing to give them new work in contrast with the Government, which awarded them major contracts on the HS2 rail scheme last summer.

Carillion collapsed under the weight of £1.6 billion in debts and a pension deficit of £587 million this week, leaving many suppliers facing ruin. But Cochrane’s statement also refers to an “entity priority analysis” by accountants EY, which had been working with the firm since the summer, on the impact of a potential failure of the bank last month.

“This showed that the insolvency recovery for creditors in the event of a group-wide liquidation would be an average of between 0.8p in the pound and 6.6p in the pound,” he wrote.

The Federation of Small Businesses said: “If these figures are correct, many small businesses will not be able to cope with that kind of impact on their cashflow.”

Cochrane also took a swipe at the “unilateral actions” of some of Carillion’s lenders as recently as last week, which “undermined the group’s efforts to conserve cash”.

Royal Bank of Scotland demanded that Carillion pre-fund Bacs payments — forcing the company to pay suppliers two days earlier than planned. Santander also put the brakes on the firm’s early payment facility without telling it before Christmas and only resumed it after “urgent discussions”.

The extent of the pressure on the firm was revealed by waning faith in the company from major suppliers. His statement reads: “Certain long-standing customers informed the company they would not place any new work until its balance sheet issues were resolved.”

Carillion’s team of advisers included EY, lawyers Slaughter and May, restructuring experts Talbot Hughes McKillop as well as Lazard and HSBC.