The receivership of Geoffrey Robinson's TransTec reminds us of the unhappy links between the engineering company and the late Robert Maxwell. Some of the company's subsidiaries were once part of Maxwell's Byzantine corporate structure. And TransTec was also audited by Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) which suffered badly from its professional involvement as auditor to parts of the Maxwell empire.

The straw that broke the camel's back at TransTec was the company's announcement that two departing directors had only "recently disclosed' the existence of an £11.2m (E17.8m) claim lodged against the company by key customer Ford in 1998. But in making the belated announcement, TransTec also said that £7.5m was paid off in 1998 with no less than £5.5m going through the profit and loss account. How come the customer claim was presumably not spotted earlier by, say, PricewaterhouseCoopers when the firm was preparing and finalising the 1998 audit? "That is a key question and one we are looking at with the company and now with the receivers,' said a PwC spokesperson.