Blame the deluded board members for Carillion's collapse

That suggests delusion in the boardroom on a grand scale. Hedge funds, looking from outside and betting on the shares going south, seem to have had a better grasp of Carillion's financial distress than the insiders.

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In the end, it comes down to judgments made in the boardroom. Carillion, outrageously, was declaring a fatter dividend for shareholders only last spring. Given what we know now, the correct action would have been to go to those investors and ask for a big injection of capital via a rights issue. Half the board would have had to resign, but an over-stretched balance sheet might have been repaired. Instead Carillion seems to have chosen to chase more low-margin contracts in a desperate attempt to keep its revenue line moving.