When I grow up I want to be an insolvency practitioner. That was my rather facetious thought upon reading BDO’s latest administrators’ report on the collapse of Halliwells. Nothing to do with the defunct firm’s travails as such – though since RBS is down over £15m it looks like taxpayers are going to take a bath.

Equally arresting is the amount BDO is charging for clearing up the mess.

Here are BDO’s hourly charge-out rates, as disclosed in the report:

  • Partner £371-£460
  • Director £319
  • Senior manager £271-£295
  • Manager £202-£232
  • Assistant manager £185
  • Senior executive £170
  • Executive £139
  • Junior executive £124
  • Cashier £170
  • Trainee £99
  • Support staff/secretary £62

Is it me, or are these amounts eye-wateringly large? Is nearly £100 an hour for some shiny-suited ingénue fresh out of beancounting college a trifle OTT? Is £62 an hour a fair rate for the person who does the photocopying?

BDO, which is not one of the Big Four accountancy firms and therefore presumably charges less, has already cleared over £1m for the Halliwells gig. It will earn far more as this complex liquidation plays out.

Good luck to them I suppose - the Gazette is not at home to the politics of envy.

But spare a thought for the unsecured creditors, sitting on debts totaling £191m. They’ll share a maximum of £600,000, considerably less than the corporate undertaker representing their interests. And that appears perverse.