Carillion is one of the UK's largest companies. But at 7 am, UK time, this morning, the company's board issued a statement that took no one by surprise. We've been here before - frantic over-weekend meetings, men in dark suits (these days there are women, too) strutting in with their brief-cases, the expectation of an enormous payday always puts a spring in the step of insolvency practitioners. Men in pin-striped suits leaving meetings stony faced: they are the bankers who decided that their duty to their shareholders exceeded their desire to prevent collapse. The shell-shocked directors who, as soon as they sign-off on the appointment of liquidators lose all authority, now only facing only a series of interviews with insolvency practitioners, possibly prosecutors, certainly Parliamentary Select Committees. And that's before the political fall-out starts in earnest.
