No more bonuses for Carillion bosses after UK collapse

LONDON: There will be no more bonus payments or severance payments to company directors of Carillion, a British government agency said yesterday as it tries to deal with the fallout of the firm’s collapse. Payments were stopped after the construction-to-catering firm went bust on Monday, the government’s Insolvency Service said.

“Any bonus payment to directors, beyond the liquidation date, have been stopped and this includes the severance payments which were being paid to some senior executives who left the company,” a spokesman for the agency said. The announcement followed a heated exchange in parliament over Carillion’s collapse, as Prime Minister Theresa May sought to defend the government’s decision to sign major deals with the company after it issued the first of several profit warnings last July. “We’re making sure in this case that public services continue to be provided, that workers in those public services are supported and taxpayers are protected,” May told lawmakers.

Carillion has public sector and private partnership contracts worth £1.7 billion ($2.35 billion, 1.9 billion euros), including cleaning and catering at public hospitals, various construction works and maintaining 50,000 army base homes for the Ministry of Defense. The government has said the company’s 19,500 staff in public sector jobs will continue to be paid, at a potential cost to the taxpayer of hundreds of millions of pounds.

— AFP LONDON: A picture shows the branding of British construction company Carillion on the hoarding at the closed access gate to the collapsed company’s construction site at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in Liverpool, northwest England.