CARILLION VULTURES
Accountants earn £1,150 an hour on firm’s collapse
ACCOUNTANTS charged up to £1,156 an hour to work on the collapse of construction giant Carillion – more than many of the workers who lost their jobs earned in a week.
The firm folded with debts of £1.5billion in January. But a letter to MPs holding an inquiry into Carillion’s demise reveals accountancy firm PwC charged £20.4million for the first eight weeks of the Carillion insolvency.
PwC staff were paid an average of £356 an hour by the official receiver.
Directors earned £559 an hour, but pension specialists got £1,156 an hour at partner level. It is expected PwC will earn more than £50million as a result of the collapse, during which 2,800 workers were made redundant. Gail Cartmail, of Unite, said: “For the thousands of workers who have lost their jobs, these figures will be viewed as both eye-watering and excessive. PwC staff will be earning in an hour what many of the workers who had their lives turned upside down earned in a week.” Ms Cartmail added: “The Government needs to introduce a realistic cap on what can be charged when accountants are brought in to mop up similar messes in the future.”
A PwC spokesman said: “Without this work, the cost to UK jobs, the economy and the taxpayer would be considerably higher.”
THE scandal of private contractor Carillion’s collapse goes from bad to worse as the vultures feed on the corpse of a firm which owes taxpayers a fortune and left thousands of workers without jobs.
Accountancy giant PwC charging up to £1,156 an hour feels as excessive as the Unite union claims, especially when concerns about the company’s previous work were raised by MPs Frank Field and Rachel Reeves, joint heads of a Parliamentary inquiry which accused the auditor of a conflict of interest.
Field’s dig that PwC had “every incentive to milk the Carillion cow dry” is reinforced by the eyewatering invoices. The insistence by a financial behemoth that the cost would otherwise be higher will only infuriate victims of a terrible corporate failure.
Carillion was an ugly face of capitalism, run for the benefit of a few at the price of the many. PwC is not covering itself in glory.