Troubled insurance claims processor Quindell, which is currently under investigation by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), has now announced that it will not be able to meet its previously agreed 30 June 2015 deadline to publish its accounts
In a statement, Quindell said that whilst the work in preparing its audited report and accounts for the year ended 31 December 2014 is ‘in its final stages’, due to the complexity of this process, they will now not be published by 30 June 2015.
The statement said the company is working through the outstanding points and will publish the accounts ‘as soon as possible’. It will release details of the annual general meeting, the timing of which is dependent on the publication of the accounts, in due course.
Last week Quindell requested for its shares on the AIM market to be suspended, saying the FRC had announced it would be investigating public statements the company made regarding its financial accounts during 2013 and 2014. The shares will continue to be suspended until the publication of the accounts.
Quindell said a review of its previous accounting policies conducted by PwC had concluded these were ‘largely acceptable but were at the aggressive end of acceptable practice’, particularly with regard to recognising revenue and deferring case acquisition costs in a number of the group’s disposed of businesses.
Earlier this year Quindell completed the sale of its Professional Services Division (PSD) at the end of May 2015 to Australian law firm Slater & Gordon for £637m.
Slater & Gordon has also announced today that it has identified errors in its own financial reporting, which relate in part to an earlier acquisition of the UK firm Russel Jones and Walker. The firm said it was co-operating with an investigated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) over consolidation errors in its reporting of historical UK cashflows for 2012, 2013, and 2014.
Slater & Gordon said it had found two errors in the method used to report receipts from customers and payments to suppliers and employees by the UK business. However, the net operating cashflows, as reported, remain unchanged. It has asked EY to conduct an assessment of its response to the ASIC queries.
Slater & Gordon also said it noted the FCA’s engagement with Quindell, and was ‘confident that it had no liability arising from that enquiry’. With regards to the PSD assets, Quindell said its evaluation of the fair value of the PSD assets was undertaken with the assistance of EY and ‘the company’s assessment of the value of those assets was undertaken under the company’s own accounting policies.’
