The company that fell to earth

There will be plenty of wise-after-the-event speculation about how a once healthy Carter & Carter ended up calling in the administrators.
But let’s put the financial autopsy to one side and remember just how difficult it has been for staff at Ruddington, who have been trying to get on with the day job in the most trying of circumstances. They deserve a medal for keeping the show on the road.
Unfortunately medals don’t pay mortgages. What the staff are really looking for is an answer to a simple question: what happens to us now?
If administrators are appointed (and we’ll find out in the next day or so) that may represent a small a chink of light.
It means experienced accountants think that once you sweep aside the wreckage there is a reasonably sound business underneath it all – one that could find a buyer.
Carter & Carter has some fabulous training facilities, particularly those at Ruddington, an operation that has years of experience training people for the car industry.
Those facilities - and the knowledge that goes with them - are effectively now on the market, at a price way below what one would expect to pay if Carter & Carter was still a high-flying Stock Exchange business.
The Ruddington site is not over-manned and staff are still busy fulfilling training contracts for customers ranging from car firms to the Learning & Skills Council.
So there is still the possibility that Ruddington could be sold as a going concern. Here’s hoping.
The story won’t end there, of course. There is a tale to be told about how an apparently healthy business got itself into this mess, and the aggressive manner in which it chased business when its founder, Phil Carter, was still alive.
After all, a year ago this was a Stock Exchange darling with a rocketing share price and an award-winning chief executive.
It all changed on the night of May 1st last year. Flying home from watching his beloved Chelsea play Liverpool, Carter’s helicopter plunged into woodland near his Cambridgeshire home.
It was an accident that claimed the life of Carter, his son Andrew, and two friends.
What unfolded in the months afterwards was a catalogue of flawed business practice and disastrous losses.
And the suspicion that on a miserable night in Cambridgeshire a business fell to earth.