Carillion’s Howson FCA fine: governance and risk lessons for project teams
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Carillion’s former chief executive Richard Howson has been fined £237,700 by the Financial Conduct Authority for recklessly failing to disclose serious financial problems in the contractor’s UK construction business before its January 2018 collapse. The FCA found he was knowingly concerned in Carillion’s breaches of the Market Abuse Regulation and Listing Rules, having not updated market announcements or properly informed the board and audit committee. Former group finance directors Richard Adam and Zafar Khan were separately fined £232,800 and £138,900 in January 2026 after dropping their own appeals.
Technical Brief
- FCA’s provisional penalty of £397,800 in 2022 was cut to £237,700 after Howson withdrew his appeal.
- Regulator concluded he was “knowingly concerned” in breaches of the Market Abuse Regulation and Listing Rules.
- Failures centred on not updating market announcements to reflect serious UK construction business financial deterioration.
- He also did not alert Carillion’s board or audit committee, undermining internal oversight and risk governance.
- As one of only two executive directors, he shared formal responsibility for investor communications and internal controls.
- Former group finance directors Richard Adam and Zafar Khan received FCA fines of £232,800 and £138,900 respectively.
- FCA enforcement lead Steve Smart explicitly linked the misconduct to job losses, public project risk and large investor losses.
Our Take
With 724 Infrastructure stories and 416 Safety-tagged pieces in our database, Carillion’s UK collapse in 2018 remains one of the few cases where regulatory fallout for directors, via the FCA, is still unfolding nearly a decade later, underscoring how long governance risk can shadow contractors on public works.
The related 8 January 2026 item on FCA penalties for Richard Adam and Zafar Khan shows that scrutiny has focused not just on Carillion as a corporate entity but on individual financial reporting decisions, a signal to UK infrastructure boards that personal accountability on disclosure now sits alongside traditional health-and-safety liability.
For UK-based operators, the sequence from the FCA’s provisional announcement in 2022 through to fines on multiple former Carillion executives suggests that regulatory investigations into financial misstatements can span many years, complicating D&O insurance, board recruitment and risk pricing on long-duration infrastructure frameworks.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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