News Former Rock employee stole £220,000 of stock

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/05/09/former-rock-employee-stole-220-000-of-stock/1

Rock's former head of sales, Paul Bicknell, stole computers to fund a lifestyle of fast cars and online gambling.

 

one word 'dick'

 

theres got to be more to it than this. i can understand losing £220,000 would cause some serious probblem for them, but to just fold lke this seems a bit much.

 

I'm even more surprised that the finance department did not even notice missing money for over two years or if they did why did they not attempt to resolve it sooner!

 

Sounds like just the tip of the iceberg

 

No wonder they've gone into administration! That's alot of money to loose for any company.

 

Yeah, it is an even larger amount of money to not realise has gone missing over a 2/3 year period!

 

It's not like it dissapeared at once... It cumulated over the years I recon... Stealing 200000 at once is noticed by everyone, stealing 1 a day is much more... subtile...

 

nothing to see here

 

If I had anything to do with Rock, I would want to wring his neck at the moment.
Its a real shame they have died. On the bright side it does show this guy up and make him look like a right *******.

 

there is no way the theft of 200,000 can cause a company to go under. there's more to this, thats a definate

 

well actually that is quite possible, if the shareholders first found out about this they would probably bail on the company...no investment = crippled company.

they are probably all asking the same question and wondering how it never got detected, hence their faith in the company gone. quite plausible really...

if their turnover is only 5 million, 200,000 is ALOT in terms of profit.

 

How does losing 220,000 over a 2 to 3 year period cause a company that has 5 million pound turn over PER YEAR cause it to go into administration? There's something dodgy there, no two ways about it.

Especially when 11,000 odd of that is in computers that were stolen but presumably insured.

 

Insurance doesn't necessarily pay out that quickly, and cashflow is always a killer in business.

Whilst £200,000 doesn't sound like a lot on roughly £15million turnover (over 3 years), when you consider how tight the margins are in the PC business it isn't actually all that surprising.

 

Rock is that big of a company? I've never seen ads outside of Bit-tech. :?

 

Turnover does not equal profit. There may have been a 5M turnover per year, but if the margins are sufficiently tight, that could equate to maybe 1M or maybe even less in yearly profit...

200K is therefore a lot to lose in this sort of circumstance. The main killer, however, seems to have been with the company's credit. Can't secure the parts for a reasonable cost, can't make the profit...

It is a shame that Rock has gone down, but at the same time, gaming notebooks are still very much a niche thing and therefore by its very nature a rather turbulent sector... (possibly going to explain the tight margins)

 

If the company could miss this level of theft from one of their employees, its no wonder that they are on the rocks. If they can't manage their own assets and employees, then how could they continue to compete in the business world? There is a fine line between knowing what is going on and micro-managing your staff, but seriously, this theft should not have been overlooked.

 

It's a PLC, so shareholders wouldn't have bailed since there are no 'public' investors.

 

That's very true. Turnover doesn't equal profit and margins are incredibly tight in the IT sector (thanks to people like Dell). The lack of credit will be a killer, but I think there is more to it than just Bicknell's thefts.

 

I used to work at Evesham Micros and their profit margin was something like 6% on each PC, I'm guessing Rock's wasn't much better.

(just don't ask where half the components in my last pc came from...)