The signs that Southern Cross would crash

The writing was on the wall for carehomes provider Southern Cross long before it went bust. Tim Bennett explains the four key signs that should have told investors the business was on the rocks.

In 2006, when private-equity group Blackstone put care-home provider Southern Cross back into public hands, the future looked bright. With an ageing population and a government keen to offload the burden of care onto the private sector, Southern Cross should have thrived. Yet fast forward five years and the company is being broken up, leaving investors nursing some painful losses.

What went wrong? Sometimes a firm runs aground with very little warning. But the sad truth is that, in this case, Southern Cross's accounts were riddled with warning signs that could have alerted observant investors to get out long before the company imploded. One problem is that, when it comes to analysing accounts, a profit and loss statement is as far as many investors ever get. As a snapshot of a year's trading, it's fine. But as a barometer of a firm's longer-term health, it's not. For that, you have to look at the balance sheet. This gives the cumulative net asset position and reveals a lot about what a business owns (its assets) and how it is all funded (liabilities and shareholders' funds). You don't need to be an expert to spot problems. Here are four.

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.