Support services firm suffers following £8m accounting irregularities costs

Support services company Interserve has been forced to take an £11m hit, largely because of costs associated with an investigation into accounting irregularities at the company.

Interserve said that it had had to pay out £8m of professional costs because of the investigation of “accounting misstatements” in its industrial services division which came to light last September.

On top of that, the company was hit by a one-off cost of £4m associated with the integration of FM company MacLellan which it bought in July last year.

However, in the trading update for the 2006 financial year, Interserve said that it had made an exceptional gain of £1m following a PFI asset sale in January 2006.

The company has secured new contracts and preferred bidder appointments of more than £1.8bn.

Interserve’s share price was unaffected by the announcement, at 430p a share.