Category: News

The Financial Conduct Authority is investigating Redcentric’s accounting mess which was made public last autumn.

For those who came in late the firm admitted to overstating assets and understating net debts. The outfit announced that it made multi-year number crunching errors that saw net assets exaggerated by £20.8 million and net debt closer to £42 million.  The company had previously said that it only had £30 milion in debt.

The CFO quit after the revelation and Redcentric hired Deloitte and law firm Navarro to complete a “forensic review” of the finances. It changed its billing and credit control management systems, and the continued restructure of the accounting department.

Now it appears that the FCA has “commenced an investigation following the historic overstatement of net assets and profits” and Redcentric said it would “co-operate fully” with the investigation.

This is the second snuffing around the hindquarters by a watchdog that Redcentric has had to undergo. Its  accountant PWC is being investigated by the Financial Reporting Council.

While the dust starts to settle after Friday’s NHS hack, the Tory government is facing rather tough questions about whether its austerity cuts were responsible.

Generally, the Tory government is not a big fan of the NHS and is rather hacked off that it keeps having to make election pledges to maintain it. However, the huge hack on Friday made people wonder if the Tories had skimped on security with the NHS.

Ben Wallace, UK security minister was put on the spot on  BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and had to defend its record on investment in cyber-security.

Asked if the Government was to blame for cutting budgets, Wallace said reasons for failures to protect against the attack dated back to decisions made by the Labour government in 2007 in relation to agreements with Microsoft.

Wallace said the Government had committed £1 billion to countering cyber threats across all Government.

“The blame lays with these individuals who have decided to blackmail and destroy our public services,” he said.

Not those who decided it was too expensive to upgrade Windows XP to something which was developed after the Romans left Britain.

“We have always said as a government that if you follow the very basic steps, continue to back yourself up as an organisation, you will always be in a position where a ransomware attack is minimised if not entirely deferred.”

The software giant has used its Build event in a bid to get more developers working with its applications

The software giant shared the latest adoption figures for its Windows 10 OS, now used by 500 million people, and also that 100 million commercial users were now using Office 365 every month.

In his keynote the firm’s CEO Satya Nadella appealed to the developer community to get more involved with the vendor.

“In a world of near infinite compute power and an exponential growth in data, we are focused on empowering every developer to build applications for this new era of intelligent cloud and intelligent edge,” he alleged.

The firm has developed more services for developers on its Azure platform and extensions to Microsoft Graph, which can provide insights that should help firms manage devices better.

Rob Howard, director, Office 365 ecosystem marketing at Microsoft, said that there were plenty of opportunities for developers to work with its products and add value and even those resellers that were not developing their own programmes there were still chances to get something out of the software.

“In a lot of cases they are either taking an offer that an ISV has built around Office 365 and taking a packaged offer to those customers, so they are really tailoring Office with the ISV to their customer needs. Or in a lot of cases they are building their own custom solutions,” he said.

Microsoft said that partners who get involved with its products have the chance to flog further services.

Office offers voice, video and security areas for the channel had been able to add further services.

Changtel Liquidator Begbies Traynor wants a collective £50 million which the company paid to its key suppliers returned.

Microsoft, Fujitsu and Swann have all received a note from Changtel which was liquidated in 2015 following a dispute with HMRC over alleged unpaid VAT.

Jason Tsai, whose family once controlled Changtel, was recently banned from being a company director for 13 years.

In February 2016, Changtel’s liquidator, Begbies Traynor, reached a £1.2 million settlement with Entatech, an independent entity which went into administration last week.

Begbies is now chasing other parties that traded with Changtel in the lead-up to its liquidation to claw back cash when it was presented with a winding-up petition on 7 June 2013, and the date of the winding-up order, on 28 January 2015. It claims that the deals were void.

Microsoft, Fujitsu and Swann are among Begbies’ top targets because they received payments in the region of £11 million , £6 million and nearly £2 million from Changtel. Mad Catz, a gaming hardware vendor which recently ceased trading, received £600,000.

A letter dated August 2016 sent by Begbies to one of the vendors involved requests that the sums they received during this period be paid back in full if validation orders were not obtained for them.

Insolvency laws are designed to protect any dispersal of assets in the period between the presentation of a winding-up petition and the formal liquidation.