Cattles Limited was a British consumer finance company based in

Batley Batley is a market town in the Kirklees district, in West Yorkshire, England, south-west of Leeds, north-west of Wakefield and Dewsbury, south-east of Bradford and north-east of Huddersfield, in the Heavy Woollen District. In 2011, the popu ...

, West Yorkshire. It was listed on the

London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...

and was a former constituent of the

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. The company entered

liquidation Liquidation is the process in accounting by which a Company (law), company is brought to an end. The assets and property of the business are redistributed. When a firm has been liquidated, it is sometimes referred to as :wikt:wind up#Noun, w ...

in September 2016.

History

The Company was founded by Joseph Cattle in 1927 in Hull."Company history"
/ref> It was first listed on the

in 1963. In the 1990s it developed the ''Shopacheck'' brand. In 1990 it acquired ''Compass Credit'' and went on to buy ''Welcome Financial Services'' in 1994, ''The Lewis Group'' in 1997 and ''Dial4aloan'' in 2001. In June 2009 in an effort to improve liquidity, Welcome Car Finance, the company's car financing arm was closed. This followed the announcement made by Cattles in May 2009 that the company was to axe 1000 jobs. The closure meant that 130 jobs were lost. In March 2009 three directors – James Corr (Finance Director), Ian Cummine (chief operating officer) and Adrian Cummings (Compliance and Risk Director) were suspended pending an investigation by

Deloitte Deloitte is a multinational professional services network based in London, United Kingdom. It is the largest professional services network in the world by revenue and number of employees, and is one of the Big Four accounting firms, along wi ...

into accounting irregularities.

PricewaterhouseCoopers PricewaterhouseCoopers, also known as PwC, is a multinational professional services network based in London, United Kingdom. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is one of the Big Four accounting firms, alon ...

agreed a request to resign as auditors of the company. Grant Thornton were appointed in their place. A forensic review completed by

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Freshfields LLP (formerly Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, or FBD) is a British multinational law firm headquartered in London, England, and a member of the so-called " Magic Circle". The firm has 28 offices in 17 jurisdictions across Asia, Europ ...

and Deloitte concluded that "the former executive directors of Cattles and certain of the former senior executives of WFS, over a period of time, had provided incomplete and misleading information and documents and/or failed to escalate matters of concern relating to impairment" and that "certain executives had provided a range of presentations, documents and verbal reassurances to the non-executive directors that everything was entirely as it should have been and that there was no reason for concern." Paul Felton-Smith, who had experience in financial restructuring, was appointed as Finance Director in June 2010. Cattles was acquired by Bovess Limited on 28 February 2011, as part of a High Court sanctioned scheme of arrangement. Cattles was then delisted from the London Stock Exchange on 7 March 2011. In September 2016 the company went into liquidation.

Operations

The company offered loans to " sub-prime" customers who are often refused credit by more mainstream lenders such as high-street banks. Since such customers are considered to be more risky, the interest rates charged tended to be significantly higher than those charged by banks. In June 2004, the

National Consumer Council National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

referred a Super-Complaint regarding the Home Collected Credit industry to the

Office of Fair Trading The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) was a non-ministerial government department of the United Kingdom, established by the Fair Trading Act 1973, which enforced both consumer protection and competition law, acting as the United Kingdom's economi ...

. The Office of Fair Trading published a consultative paper which raised concerns about concentration of market share between the four largest providers, including Cattles. It also mentioned a number of business practices and customer characteristics which could hinder market competitiveness.OFT action on Home Collected Credit Super-complaint

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.cattles.co.uk/ Defunct financial services companies of the United Kingdom Defunct companies of England Financial services companies established in 1927 Financial services companies disestablished in 2016 1927 establishments in England 2016 disestablishments in England