The government has dropped its pursuit of five former Carillion non-executive directors, hours before a High Court “test case” was due to begin.
The Insolvency Service had been seeking disqualification orders that would have prevented five former board members of the construction group, including Philip Green, the long-serving chairman, from acting as directors, but it dropped the civil action on Friday afternoon. A 13-week trial had been due to begin yesterday.
It has left the government facing questions over why it invested substantial sums of public money in what it had described as a test case on the responsibilities of non-executives.
Kwasi Kwarteng, as business secretary, launched the disqualification proceedings in January 2021.
Yesterday, the government also unexpectedly scrapped plans that would have required company boards to set out the main risks to their survival in an annual “resilience” statement.
