Richard John Howson is a British businessman, and the former chief executive of Carillion, a British multinational facilities management and construction services company that went into liquidation in January 2018. Howson's "misguided self-assurance" was said to have contributed to the company's collapse.
Howson worked at Balfour Beatty, Bovis and Tarmac before becoming operations director for the Carillion Building business in 1999. In March 2004 he was promoted to national construction director on the Carillion Building senior management team, before becoming managing director of Carillion Rail in 2006, and then managing director of Carillion's Middle East and North African operations in 2007. Howson was appointed chief operating officer of Carillion in September 2010.
CEO of Carillion (2011-2017)
Howson was appointed as chief executive officer of Carillion in December 2011. He stepped down in July 2017, following a profits warning that led to the company's shares falling almost 40%, with Keith Cochrane temporarily taking on the role. Howson was asked to return his bonus, following the announcement of a £845 million impairment charge in its construction services division under his leadership at Carillion. On 29 September 2017, it was revealed that Carillion's losses for the six months ended 30 June 2017 totaled £1.15 billion, following a further write-down of £200 million, this time in its support services division. On 15 January 2018, Carillion went into compulsory liquidation. The company is under formal investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority for the term Howson was CEO. After giving evidence on 6 February 2018, Howson was one of several former Carillion directors described as "delusional characters" by House of CommonsSelect Committee chairs Frank Field and Rachel Reeves. During evidence, the company claimed it was owed £200m in relation to the Msheireb Downtown Doha project in Qatar, and Howson said he felt like "a bailiff" in chasing the debt. Carillion investors said the board focused more on their own pay than the company's performance, with protection of directors' pay extending to creation of a secret bank account for Howson's share-related bonuses. In the final report of the Parliamentary inquiry into the collapse of Carillion, published on 16 May 2018, Howson was severely criticised, described as "the figurehead for a business model that was doomed to fail". The report continued: The report also recommended that the Insolvency Service should consider whether the former Carillion directors, including Howson, could be disqualified from acting as a director. The parliamentary process and findings have been questioned as lacking in objectivity and thoroughness, treating a highly complex situation in an incomplete manner. Howson contends that Carillion was a victim of its public sector clients and that “any analysis as to the causes of the failure of Carillion is not complete without looking at the way in which government and the wider public sector procured services from Carillion and failed to administer payments.”
