The halfway figures from Capita were always going to be horribly messy. The company was forced to restate its figures for 2016 because of changes to accounting standards that were aimed to reflect the short-term impact of long-term contracts.
The company announced this month that on the new basis profits for last year would have been almost a third lower. This cleared the way for interim results that were drawn up using the new accounting standards.
They did, however, contain large write-offs from exiting businesses and other provisions. These include the cost of selling its asset services side in the summer for £888 million, a deal which took the pressure off the balance sheet and probably obviated the need for a rights issue.
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