I am back. So is SGH, page-1728

Ironically it is AG that has given the assurance WTG investors need...

...Mr Grech said the first he had read in detail about Quindell was a report released by Gotham City Research, a New York hedge fund that made serious allegations about the company’s accounting practices.

“I agreed with it, that’s why I didn’t touch it, because I thought their work-in-progress recognition was just crazy land and so we stayed away from it for that reason,” Mr Grech said.

“When it became clear there was an opportunity just to take out the professional services and the legal services part of it, if you’re only buying that part of the business you don’t buy the listed entity pregnant with those accounting problems, you get the opportunity to apply your own accounting standards to it, so we saw that as quite an opportunity.”

Slater & Gordon, at the time of the deal, said it had conducted extensive due-diligence and investigated Quindell’s case book, assisted by Ernst & Young, pushing down the acquisition price from earlier reported figures of nearly £1bn ($2.13bn).