Carillion, which has a variety of private and public service contracts in Britain and employs 43,000 staff worldwide, announced its immediate liquidation Monday after the heavily-indebted company failed to secure a last-ditch financial rescue from the government and banks. Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey said Labour wanted a full investigation into the government's dealings with Carillion: "This company issued three profit warnings in the last six months, yet despite those profit warnings the government continued to grant contracts to this company." Britain’s second biggest construction firm is understood to have public sector or public/private partnership contracts worth £1.7 billion, including providing school dinners, cleaning and catering at NHS hospitals, construction work on rail projects such as HS2 and maintaining 50,000 Army base homes for the Ministry of Defence. “We understand that HM Government will be providing the necessary funding required by the Official Receiver to maintain the public services carried on by Carillion staff, subcontractors and suppliers.”

Carillion had met lenders HSBC, Barclays, Santander and Royal Bank of Scotland on Wednesday to discuss options for reducing debts, recapitalise or restructure the group’s balance sheet. Carillion’s struggles pose a conundrum for Prime Minister Theresa May over whether to use public money to assist a private company, or allow it to founder, putting public services and infrastructure projects nationwide in danger. Image copyright HS2/Grimshaw Image caption Carillion is part of a consortium working on the HS2 rail line

Mick Cash, the general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, said: "This is disastrous news for the workforce and disastrous news for transport and public services in Britain. “The blame for this lies squarely with the Government who are obsessed with outsourcing key works to these high-risk private enterprises.”

Jim Kennedy, the Unite union’s national officer for local government, said a public inquiry was needed to answer questions about Carillion’s conduct and the Government’s decision to award it contracts.
After talks between the company, its lenders, and the United Kingdom's government fail to reach a deal, British multinational facilities management and construction services company Carillion fails and is liquidated, threatening thousands of jobs. Carillion is currently involved in projects such as the high-speed rail in the United Kingdom, including the High Speed 2 rail line.