Sure enough, on the day GKN (GKN) revealed a £15m non-cash impairment on its North American aerospace business, together with news of a £40m charge on two “commercially sensitive” claims, we released an issue with a cover feature extolling the virtues of the Redditch-based engineering group. A raft of broker downgrades duly followed.
The timing also wasn’t particularly auspicious given the management changes announced in September. These setbacks will certainly put the heat on Kevin Cummings, who is replacing Nigel Stein as chief executive in December. Ideally, My Cummings would have liked to have focused on ongoing remedial measures linked to the group’s unwieldy pension deficit, but he’ll now probably spend a lot of time fending off speculation linked to the possible break-up of the group in its current form.
