Former Carillion boss secures US job after UK disqualification
Three months after being disqualified for eight years as a UK director, former Carillion CEO Richard Howson had secured a senior role at a Florida technology company.
Serving as CEO from 2011 and 2017, Howson was accused of falsifying and concealing the reality of major contracts that became loss-making such as Midlands Metropolitan Hospital, Battersea Power Station and Royal Liverpool University Hospital.
Carillion employed 18,000 people in the UK when it collapsed into liquidation in January 2018 with liabilities of almost £7bn. It was building One Chamberlain Square in Birmingham when it collapsed.
Now Howson has been named as construction president at TECfusions, a green-tech firm that renovates and develops energy projects and data centres.
He was banned by the Insolvency Service in October for false accounting, profit overstatement, net debt understatement and concealment from the auditors of the true picture regarding Carillion’s repayments.
In addition, Howson failed to disclose to auditors information relating to major contracts over several years and allowed the firm to prepare and publish financial statements for 2015 and 2016 which did not give a “true and fair view of the company”.
For example, in 2015, Carillion’s profits should have been £65.3m rather than £155.1m and in 2016, the firm should have reported a loss of £61.7m rather than a profit of £146.7m.
Some of Howson’s market announcements in 2016 and 2017 also came under fire as they were misleading about the reality of Carillion’s financial performance, position and prospects.
A final dividend payment of £54.4m in 2016 which could not have been justified as the financial statements of that period did not give a “true and fair view”.
