FTSE firms ‘cannibalising’ their accounts

BRITAIN faces a repeat of the Carillion collapse because big companies have ‘cannibalised’ their balance sheets to boost dividends to shareholders, a report has warned.

Firms have increasingly focused on artificially driving up share prices using debt and takeovers, says think-tank Productivity Insights Network.

It said the rate of increase in dividends and share buybacks over the past decade, which have totalled £1 trillion in that time, had far exceeded the rate of profit growth.

Professor Richard Murphy, one of the authors of the report, said: ‘ Businesses that pay out more than they earn cannot survive in the long term.

‘ What is happening in this country, in the FTSE, is a recipe for a flood of corporate failures like Carillion.’

Greedy bosses, corporate cover-ups, excessive dividends and accountancy failures were blamed for the failure of the construction giant in 2018.