Resonation.
We’re a global economy now. Things are so interconnected that events thousands of miles away can have repercussions in another country. Two such events have caught my eye this week and both resonate with me personally.
Firstly, the UK’s second largest construction company, Carillion, has failed. One may have thought this was one of those, “too big to fail cases,” but apparently not. There will be thousands of job losses and likely sub contractor business failures as the process plays out. In my previous career in construction, I’ve seen it all before, experienced a major client going to the wall and virtually whistling for any hope of the money owed.
Carillion operates in Canada, Alberta included, and I believe employs around 6,000 people. How many more businesses relies or relied on Carillion? I don’t know. Carillion in Canada have released a statement: “On Jan. 15, 2018, Carillion PLC announced that it has been unable to achieve a restructuring and as a result Carillion PLC and certain subsidiaries have been placed into Compulsory Liquidation. However, Carillion’s Canadian operations are not in liquidation and continue uninterrupted.
Our employees, subcontractors and suppliers in Canada continue to be paid and we remain committed to delivering safe, quality services for our clients. Our Canadian leadership is currently assessing the situation and working with stakeholders to ensure continuity of operations.”
There is hope for now. On a personal note I recall working as a sub contractor in the UK for one of the companies that was gobbled up by Carillion on the way up. It was the biggest contract we ever did, and we employed up to 60 people doing it. It was also the biggest nightmare to run and almost put us out of business because of late and incorrect payments. We believed that this was policy at the time. Sadly, such behaviour came with the territory.
Now a four-letter word, bank. There was a time when banks were better, even highly regarded. That is not the case now. In Canada, banks are in the news as employees of the big institutions speak out about the lengths they are expected, to go to for upselling to customers. There are sorry tales of career threats. Others tell of taking medical leave for stress. There are calls for a parliamentary inquiry.
In the UK, one of the biggest banks, RBS, that was bailed out by the government in the financial crisis, is in the news again. This is over a business unit that it operated for distressed businesses. The trouble is that most businesses that went into this unit, supposedly for help, never came out. It looks like RBS had a policy of taking these businesses for everything they had. Many of them failed, many of the owners lost everything. Again, this is a hot topic in the UK parliament. The word, “theft” was used in parliament.
And, again, this resonates with me because one of the brands RBS gobbled up used to be the business banker for our construction company back in the late 1980s. Was there bad behaviour? Yes. To get our business overdraft renewed we had to provide free services for building a manager’s house extension. Other trades worked on the same basis.
And, now for the good news, or at least I hope it is. I’ve read that scientists at John Hopkins University are trialling a blood test that may detect eight common forms of cancer. There is more work to do but apparently the test looks for mutations in 16 genes that regularly occur in cancers. Hopefully, blood tests can eventually take over most of the more intrusive cancer detection methods. Ironically the article I read mentioned that too early a cancer detection may raise problems of how to treat it.