As the Wilko saga rumbles on, attention has turned to the number crunchers who allowed it to get into dire straits without raising the alarm.
EY has come under pressure after experts told The Mail on Sunday it was ‘bizarre’ the auditor had approved the accounts.
But it’s not the first cash crisis that Wilko’s finance chief has had to deal with.
Saga: Attention has turned to the number crunchers who allowed Wilko to get into dire straits without raising the alarm
Dave Murphy, who has only been in post since earlier this year, spent more than six years at troubled Pizza Express, most as head bean counter at its UK and Ireland arm.
His tenure coincided with a painful restructuring as the Italian-inspired chain tried to avoid being crushed under a £1 billion debt pile racked up by successive private equity owners.
With private equity firm M2 recently booted out of the Wilko bidding war, Murphy may think his current employer – under fire as it is – dodged a bullet.
Few notice closure of IPSX
One of London’s stock exchanges announced it was closing for good last week, although few are likely to have noticed.
The International Property Securities Exchange (IPSX) launched in 2019 and focused on real estate investment trusts that own a single asset.
But it is now shutting down with just three listed companies, which, coincidentally, are all managed by one firm, M7 Real Estate.
While many will link the failure to high interest rates, one analyst said it could’ve been that IPSX was ‘offering a solution to a problem that did not exist’.
Ouch!
Darktrace investors scared by Autonomy link
Cybersecurity firm Darktrace posted its full-year results last week as it looked to draw a line under a spat with a short-seller that raised questions about its accounting controls.
While it shrugged off the accusations, questions over numbers could be the least of its worries.
An analyst told Whispers that investors were still being scared away by its ‘dirty’ links with Autonomy, a software firm whose founder, Mike Lynch, was extradited to the US to face fraud charges.
Lynch is a key Darktrace stakeholder, and several former Autonomy staff work there, including boss Poppy Gustafsson. Darktrace said Lynch has ‘no operational, advisory or any other role’ at the firm.
‘In security, trust is everything,’ the analyst said.
Clive Black takes aim at BBC
In the genteel world of investment research, Shore Capital’s Clive Black stands out for his shoot-from-the-lip pugnacity.
The retail guru was at it again last week as he took aim at the BBC and others for ‘calling out’ the UK’s poor economic performance, when the Office for National Statistics had its numbers wrong all along.
‘Those politicising economic data ignore such a big misstatement of fact to their discredit,’ he said.
As the gloomsters digest heaps of humble pie after the huge upgrade to the UK economy, Black even wonders if the BBC should appoint ‘a rising living standards correspondent’.
Now there’s a thought.
Contributor: Patrick Tooher
