Ross Butler

Not a scandal but a textbook success

Ross Butler says MPs’ criticisms of the sell-off of theformer Defence Research Agency are financially naive

issue 21 June 2008

Ross Butler says MPs’ criticisms of the sell-off of theformer Defence Research Agency are financially naive

In America it would have created celebrity entrepreneurs and provided a template for future deals. Instead, the British government’s hugely successful privatisation of the defence business QinetiQ has prompted a political witch-hunt.

The taxpayer made more than £800 million from the deal, far more than anyone dreamed at the start of the process. But a Committee of Public Accounts report on 10 June, following a National Audit Office inquiry, blasted the Ministry of Defence for selling too cheaply, and the company’s management for profiteering from the process of transferring what was originally the Defence Research Agency into the private sector. The Committee’s Conservative chairman, Edward Leigh MP, said the MoD had conducted a preliminary sale to a private equity firm in 2003 ‘like an innocent at a table of card sharps’.

Meanwhile, QinetiQ’s chairman, Sir John Chisholm — who joined the Defence Research Agency on its formation in 1991, and went on to gain £26 million from its sale — stands accused of helping hand the business to private equity on the cheap in return for his cut.

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