The former chief executive of collapsed Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR) contractor Carillion has been fined £237,000.
Richard Howson, 57, led Carillion in the seven years before it went into liquidation in January 2018.
City watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA),said he was “knowingly in breach” of rules designed to prevent market abuse and that his leadership amounted to “market manipulation” in the value of the company’s shares.
Carillion was originally part of the consortium behind the £1.5billion-plus Aberdeen bypass project. Its collapse left the remaining partners, Galliford Try and Balfour Beatty, facing significant additional costs.
Howson was also a non-executive director at Aberdeen-based engineering services firm Wood, joining in April 2016 and stepping down in January 2018 following Carillion’s collapse.
He has already been banned from serving as a director for eight years by the UK Insolvency Service.
Steve Smart, Executive Director of Enforcement at the FCA, said: “Jobs were lost, public sector projects put at risk and investors, who trusted the company to give them accurate information, suffered large-scale losses.”
The FCA said Howson was aware of serious financial troubles in Carillion’s UK construction business but failed to reflect this in company announcements or alert other board members.
It said he failed to act with integrity and was responsible for the release of misleading statements.
Two former finance directors, Richard Adam and Zafar Khan, were fined £232,800 and £138,900 respectively last month.