Director sold shares before Carillion's decline

CARILLION's ex-finance director, Richard Adam, cashed-in nearly £800,000 worth of of his shares before the firm's collapse.

Today, Zak Garner-Purkis, the news editor of Construction News, wrote:

'It’s not every day that a director’s decision to sell the rest of their shares upon retirement is criticised in a statement by MPs.'

Yet today it seems that the situation with Carillion is an exceptional one, and the man under the microscope Richard Adam, was Carillion’s finance director for the 10 years leading up to the current crisis.

 Mr. Adam now says he didn’t see the storm clouds on the horizon when he sold his shares at the end of 2016, maintaining that the firm’s difficulties were manageable at that point.

But the Chair of the Work and Pensions select committee, Labour MP, Frank Field, saw it a bit differently.

'Dumping the last of his shares at the first possible moment because he is – with his own money at least – ‘risk-averse’.  What conclusions are we to draw from that?', the MP asked.

Or, as the HP SAUCE column in the current Private Eye wrote of the same esisode:
'During robotic evidence from another former finance director Richard Adam, his neighbour, (Richard) Howson rolled his eyes.'

Chairman Frank Field had also told the Select Committee that:  'Mr Adam pesided over Carillion's finances for a decade [and] he more than anyone else ought to know the merits of Carillion shares as a long-term investment in the light of his lengthy and lucrative tenure.'

'(By) dumping the last of his shares at the first possible moment because he is -with his own money at least - "risk averse".  What conclusions are we to draw from that?', asked Field.

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