Slater & Gordon suffers huge losses

Slater & Gordon has announced that it will suffer more than AUS$1bn in losses for the 2015-2016 financial year. Or in Personal Injury terms: a pratfall.

The accident-prone firm announced to the Australian stock exchange that its net loss after tax for the second half of 2015-16 is expected to be AUS$59.3m. Its mammoth first half year loss was AUS$958.3m, which brings the firm's full year net loss to over AUS$1bn.

Slater and Gordon's group managing director Andrew Grech said that the financial year was a "story of two different halves". He said the first half was "extremely disappointing and well below expectations", but that in the second half, "we have taken significant steps towards turning around the performance of the UK business". Although with losses of almost AUS$60m in the second half those significant steps appear to have been made in glass slippers on an ice rink.

Slater & Gordon: still standing

It has been a torrid year for the ambulance-chasing firm. Its shares were suspended, it suffered accusations of bullying and when their pay cheques arrived late staff told RollOnFriday they were worried it was going under.

A significant source of S&G's woes has been its disastrous acquisition of the ~~bag of poo disguised as gold~~ professional services division of Quindell. Hindsight can be a wonderful thing:

If only they'd watched the video

Tip Off ROF

Comments

And Irwin Mitchell's profits slide 25%. The personal injury market for both claimant and defendant firms is in a real mess. There will be further attacks on their revenue streams this year.

Share price is up 90% in the last time ROF carried an S&G story. Nice little earner.

I used to work for Quindell. They forgot to pay three months in a row. When I left they had the audacity to allege that I had accidentally been overpaid £4.59 and therefore, I owed them money. Still, they were a better employer than BLM where the supervising partner used to cry at her desk and giggle at pictures of horses all day. Wacko!

I knew somebody who worked at Quindell's Salford gulag, and who was honest/foolish enough to tell me that his job was to cold call people, seeking to persuade them to make personal injury claims irrespective of whether they had suffered any injury.

There were very many reasons why I left S&G, the taint of Quinron being just one.

Barristers say they are no longer making payments on account but holding off paying until cases are finally closed.

Watch out the death knell is upon us. Who will be next? The rats are leaving a sinking ship..... leaving the fat cats behind preening themselves and cocking up their tails in their weak victory... until they sink to the bottom of the ocean.

I used to work at said Titanic the stats show that this ocean going disaster liner is being run by the former management team of the former Pannone ship before it sunk
most of those clinging to the life rafts and escaping are from the Fentons legacy outfit of 250 employees who went over on merger 168 have leapt over board ....

This is nothing compared to Irwin Mitchell. They bought Thomas Eggar and lost £30m. How is that possible?

That's because, of all the legacy firms, Fentons was the only profitable, stable outfit. It was the only legacy firm in excellent financial shape when it was bought. It was well managed, profitable and full of happy, well motivated, well paid staff who had faith in the management team. The workforce was so loyal, in fact, that staff turnover was virtually unheard of. It's financial future appeared as secure as any, as it was able to generate its own work without buying it from intermediaries. The quality of the work, both coming in and going out, was excellent. S&G soon put a stop to absolutely all of that.

All of which is to say that the Fentons cohort probably fell the furthest.

One of the 168.

If the claimant pi market is screwed so are those doing defendant pi. Some are trying to diversify by merging with third rate firms to provide a platform to develop non pi services whilst others carry on in denial.
They are all being overpaid for process.
It will get worse before it gets better.