Richard Howson will not be able to be a director of a UK company after the authority said he ought to have known that the way some contracts were reported “concealed the reality of the deterioration”. The former chief executive “ought” also to have known of the “false accounting, of the profit overstatement and of the net debt understatement and of the concealment from the auditors” around what payments Carillion was obliged to make to Wipro, a consultancy. He also signed off on a £54.
Less than a year later, the firm – which employed around 12,000 people – collapsed. Mr Howson is not the first to be suspended. This summer former finance boss Zafar Khan was banned from being a director for 11 years. An Insolvency Service spokesperson said: “The Insolvency Service, acting on behalf of the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, has accepted a disqualification undertaking from Richard Howson for eight years for his conduct as a director of Carillion Plc.