Timing is everything. Tempus recommended selling shares in Provident Financial only hours before the stock market opened on Tuesday when they plunged 66 per cent to a two-decade low. It was the worst one-day performance of a FTSE 100 company since Royal Bank of Scotland in 2009 and the third worst on record.
Despite the continuing problems with the restructuring of the doorstep-lending business, no one, other than the shell-shocked directors, would have realised the extent of the problems at the group’s home credit business until the board meeting on Monday evening.
A profit warning — the second in two months — a suspended dividend, the immediate departure of Peter Crook, its long-serving chief executive, and the disclosure of a Financial Conduct Authority investigation into
