The listed company was placed into liquidation on 15 January as last ditch talks to rescue the company failed when banks refused to extend further credit lines to the huge construction company.

As the largest government building contractor in the UK, Carillion is responsible for public sector contracts from hospital construction to schools, the HS2 high speed rail link and prison maintenance as well as facilities contracts for cleaning, maintenance and even provision of school dinners. A third of the company’s contracts were for public sector work.

Carillion held crisis talks with key financial stakeholders and government representatives, asking for limited short term financial support, to enable it to continue to trade while longer term engagement continued but the talks failed. The board said it had to enter into compulsory liquidation with immediate effect, putting at risk 20,000 employees and 24,000 jobs at subcontractors.

In a statement Carillion said: ‘An order has been granted to appoint the official receiver as the liquidator of Carillion. We anticipate that the official receiver will make an application to the High Court for PricewaterhouseCoopers to be appointed as special managers, to act on behalf of the official receiver.’

The viability statement issued in the 2016 Carillion annual report on 30 June 2017 claimed that there were no foreseeable risks to the business, stating: ‘On the basis of both reasonably probable and more extreme downside scenarios, the directors believe that they have a reasonable expectation that the company will be able to continue in operation and meet its liabilities as they fall due over the three-year period of their assessment’.

In early January, the Financial Conduct Authority started an investigation into the ‘timeliness and content of announcements made by Carillion between 7 December 2016 and 10 July 2017’. After the collapse, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) was considering an investigation into the £1.4m audit of the company by KPMG.

Sara White