Professional & technical services insolvencies

This sector covers law, accountancy, consulting, architecture, engineering, advertising and other professional and technical firms. They are people businesses where the main asset walks out of the door each evening and the main cost is salaries.

Failures usually follow a loss of fee income: a major client leaving, a project ending, or partners and staff departing with their clients. Because there are few hard assets to fall back on, a sustained dip in billings can quickly turn into insolvency.