1927 headquarters batley uk key people margaret young executive chairman revenue 822.2 million 2007 operating income 165.2 million 2007 net income 114.7 million 2007 website www.cattles.co.uk cattles plc is a british consumer finance company based in batley west yorkshire . it was listed on the london stock exchange and is a former constituent of the ftse 250 index . contents 1 history 2 operations 3 controversy over home collected credit 4 references 5 external links history edit the company was founded by joseph cattle in 1927 in hull . 1 it was first listed on the london stock exchange in 1963 . 1 in the 1990s it developed the shopacheck brand . 1 in 1990 it acquired compass credit and went on to buy welcome financial services in 1994 the lewis group in 1997 and dial4aloan in 2001 . 1 in june 2009 in an effort to improve liquidity welcome car finance the company s car financing arm was closed . 2 this followed the announcement made by cattles in may 2009 that the company was to axe 1000 jobs . the closure meant that 130 jobs were lost . 2 in march 2009 three directors james corr finance director ian cummine chief operating officer and adrian cummings compliance and risk director were suspended pending an investigation by deloitte into accounting irregularities . 3 in july 2009 the above 3 directors were dismissed without compensation and the chairman norman broadhurst and ceo david postings chose to leave the group . in december 2009 the company announced that its losses were such that shareholders could not expect their shares suspended from trading in april 2009 to have any value . executive chairman margaret young refused to put to an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders a proposal that the non executive directors who constituted the audit committee of the company consider resigning at the end of the year . shareholders then voted with an 83 % majority in favour of a request to ask the financial creditors of the company to sanction the payment of up to 500 000 to cover the costs of a shareholder petitioning to wind up the company . 4 pwc price waterhouse coopers agreed a request to resign as auditors of the company . grant thornton were appointed in their place . 5 paul felton smith who is experienced in financial restructuring was appointed as finance director in june 2010 . 6 cattles was acquired by bovess limited on 28 february 2011 as part of a high court sanctioned scheme of arrangement . cattles was then delisted from the lse on 7 march 2011 . 1 operations edit the company offers loans to sub prime customers who are often refused credit by more mainstream lenders such as high street banks . since such customers are considered to be more risky the interest rates charged tend to be significantly higher than those charged by banks . controversy over home collected credit edit in june 2004 the national consumer council referred a super complaint regarding the home collected credit industry to the office of fair trading . the office of fair trading published a consultative paper which raised concerns about concentration of market share between the four largest providers including cattles . it also mentioned a number of business practices and customer characteristics which could hinder market competitiveness . 7 references edit a b c d e company history a b welcome car finance to close . motor finance 22 may 2009 crisis at cattles deepens as three more directors are suspended guardian 10 march 2009 daily telegraph verification needed cattles plc rns restructuring expert felton smith joins cattles as fd accountancy age 11 june 2010 oft action on home collected credit super complaint external links edit official website linkedin profile yahoo profile welcome finance official site retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title cattles & oldid 735213351 categories companies established in 1927hidden categories all pages needing factual verificationwikipedia articles needing factual verification from june 2010official website different in wikidata and wikipedia navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 19 august 2016 at 08 12 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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