Caterham’s administrators "have been accused of cynically 'burying bad news' by flaunting the success of their fans donations scheme on the day they laid off all 200 staff," according to Daniel Johnson of the London TELEGRAPH.
Despite still being £400,000 ($626,000) short of their "crowdfunding" target when the original deadline passed on Friday night, Caterham "will make it to the final race next weekend but with a disbanded workforce." Sources said that "those travelling to Abu Dhabi will be paid a consultancy fee after seven weeks without pay." Administrator Finbarr O'Connell said that the “vast majority” of employees asked to be made redundant and that the timing was “purely coincidental.”
He said, "They told me they can only last without cash for so long, so we had approaches saying they must make us redundant. It’s what the vast majority of the employees wanted. It’s a twin track approach." There are "tentative plans to take out a mass law suit against Tony Fernandes," the Queens Park Rangers owner, who sold the team to a group of Swiss and Middle Eastern investors earlier this year. It is "not clear in what state" Caterham will make it to Abu Dhabi. O’Connell, who has become the self-styled team principal, claimed "the objective is to showcase Caterham to help secure a buyer." But the car "has not been developed for weeks, with the factory locked at certain points, and they currently have no confirmed drivers" (TELEGRAPH, 11/16). The BBC reported former Caterham senior analyst Jim McManus said that ex-Caterham Owner Fernandes has "walked away" from employees. He said that he wanted Fernandes to "take some responsibility for the situation." McManus: "He's a wealthy man, an owner of a Premiership football team and I think he's got a moral responsibility to the employees to do the right thing" (BBC, 11/17).
