Personal injury firm Slater & Gordon has suspended the trading of its shares until it posts its half-year results. Trading will resume on 29 February for gamblers those that wish to invest in a roller-coaster of an opportunity.

The Australian firm has called for the trading freeze since it claims that "certain material items" in its interim accounts need to be finalised, including the assessment of "goodwill values for impairment of the British business" which S&G bought from Quindell. It all seems a bit mysterious and a Slater & Gordon spokeswoman did not respond to a request to elaborate.

The suspension of shares won't help the uncertainty and low confidence that investors have had in S&G over the last eleven months. When S&G acquired a division of Quindell in March 2015, Managing Director Andrew Grech said that "a very extensive due diligence process" had taken place. However, in June that year the Financial Conduct Authority began to investigate Quindell over alleged irregularities in its accounts. Investors got the jitters about the S&G/Quindell deal and the Australian firm's share price started to dip.

Matters got worse for S&G in July 2015 when Australian regulators subjected the firm to an investigation for overstating its accounts, causing the share price to plummet by 40% in 5 days of trading. And S&G took a further hammering in November when the UK government announced plans to limit P.I. claims, which resulted in its share price halving overnight. Having nose-dived, tripped up and fallen, the Australian firm's frozen shares currently lie prone at just AUS$0.83, which is a 90% drop from the high of AUS$7.85 in April 2015.

"So, Mr Slater, can you describe how this Quindell thingy made you have a nasty fall?"

 
The firm's problems in the market are reflected in the workplace too. S&G missed out on the Golden Turd by a whisker in this year's Firm of the Year Survey. Staff wrote in to complain about "money grabbing management" with "no regard for employees". Many questioned the strategy and implementation of buying other large PI firms "in a short space of time" but "failing to integrate them".  For others, the end is nigh, with one lawyer predicting that the firm is "about to shrivel up and die". On top of this, S&G has had to deal with allegations of bullying. On the plus side, erm, some lawyers say they can leave the office at 5pm every day, presumably because the work is drying up.