Bleasdale still reeling over suspensions

Kate Bleasdale is furious. “Am I going to sit back and take this lying down; no I am bloody not,” she says.

Healthcare Locums, the medical staffing agency she founded, suspended her as executive vice-chairman and the first she knew about it was the Stock Exchange announcement on Tuesday morning.

Still reeling from the “unbelievable” news that also saw finance director Diane Jarvis, and the company’s shares suspended, Ms Bleasdale said her biggest concern was for the 700 staff and 10,000 contractors that Healthcare Locums, the world’s biggest medical recruitment company, employs worldwide.

“This is a people business; all we’ve got is goodwill. We have no tangible assets,” she said, speaking to the Financial Times this week.

Suspended pending an investigation into accounting irregularities, which led to a profit warning, she has “no idea” as to the nature of the black hole, or even, in fact, whether there is one. The finances are the responsibility of the audit committee, of which she is not a member.

But with speculation rife in the City, Ms Bleasdale has no doubt that the announcement has been a train crash for the company, which was worth £131m when the market closed on Monday night.

City analysts have been keen to point out that Ms Bleasdale has been here before. A YouTube video doing the rounds in the wake of the news featured Ms Bleasdale dancing to Abba’s Waterloo, with the lyrics “The history book on the shelf, is always repeating itself”.

The Bolton-born nurse turned serial entrepreneur herself is quite clear which part of history is being replayed.

“This is the second time I’ve started a company; the second time I’ve done a transformational acquisition and the second time someone thought they could do it better,” says Ms Bleasdale, who owns a 12 per cent stake in the recruiter.

The first time round ended badly for the company, if not for Ms Bleasdale. She trained as a nurse, winning rapid promotion but finding the organisation of staff cover a chore. In 1986 she and John Cariss, now her husband, founded the nursing agency Match, which 10 years later merged with a GP deputising service and formed Sinclair Montrose. It grew into the second-largest healthcare staffing agency in the UK and, as chief executive, she became Aim Entrepreneur of the Year in 1997. But she was dismissed in 2001 after a boardroom row.

Ms Bleasdale claimed unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination, telling an employment tribunal how her “sexist bastard” colleagues had driven her almost to the edge of a nervous breakdown and forced her out. She won the case and the pay-out of more than £2m was one of the UK’s biggest sex discrimination settlements.

Speculation this time has surrounded two defining moments last year. In March the company announced an accounting change that sent pre-tax profits for 2009 tumbling.

Given its increasing international focus and the length of time it takes to place candidates worldwide, the company decided to recognise revenue when a candidate starts – rather than accepts – a position. But even Ms Bleasdale, who defends the change, agrees the announcement – which delayed results by a day – was handled “badly”.

A £6.7m deal to buy Redwood Health, a nursing agency owned by Ms Bleasdale’s husband, also attracted scrutiny. Signed off with 99.9 per cent shareholder approval, the acquisition expanded the company’s remit from supplying medical specialists to hospitals and GP surgeries around the world to one that included general nursing provision.

But clearly boardroom tensions were simmering, even if they had not as yet boiled to the surface.