Carillion has ‘no future without rights issue of at least £500m’

For many, the morning of 8 July promised a feast of sport: the British Lions Test in New Zealand, a Lord’s Test and Wimbledon. But a small group of bankers were about to have their weekend ruined by a summons to an emergency meeting in London’s Maddox Street.

Board papers had been delivered to the homes of the directors of Carillion, a FTSE 250 business best known as a builder that works on huge construction projects, and the documents contained disturbing news. A review of the group’s finances, commissioned two months earlier from accountants KPMG, had unearthed a gaping hole in the accounts.