£42million for the Phoenix 4.... and £30million for the accountants. Now that's what I call engineering.

Again, ironically, this structure worked like a well-oiled machine, a complex engine. It sucked away assets one way and blew out tax liabilities in another, routing them to complex exhausts and bi-valves ensuring that Phoenix was surrounded with isolators and converters protecting them from liabilities. MGR was the back box into which losses and liabilities were pumped and a back-firing system ensured that any tax losses could find their way back into Phoenix for them to utilise instead.

This kind of corporate engineering, like financial engineering, usually requires complex accounting and legal advice to work. Not least to ensure that it's legal.

I'm not, of course, suggesting that the accountants and lawyers here suggested or enabled this system - that is for others to judge more expert than I am in these matters.

But what the workers of Longbridge need to remember is that while the Phoenix 4 and the MGR chief executive took over £42million from the well-oiled machine, the report points out in its conclusions (Chapter XXV, para 56) that Deloittes, the auditing accountants, were invoiced for fees of over £30 million (yes, that's right, £30 million!) during 'the Phoenix Years' 2000-2005.

The report states : "Fees charged by Deloitte to the Group between 2000 and 2005 totalled £30.65 million. It might be suggested that the high level of Deloitte's non-audit fees, which amounted to £28.75 million (some 15 times Deloitte's total audit fees), might have posed a threat to Deloitte's independence and objectivity in respect of their audits of the Group."

While the report suggests that Deloitte's managed not to compromise themselves, and that in this case he who paid the piper did not call the tune, the figures involved, are in any event, utterly breathtaking.

The report does not give us a total for the solicitors' fees, but does mention that "on 7 April 2005, when there was known to be a very real risk that MGRG would have to go into administration imminently (as it in fact did the next day) and other creditors were not being paid, Mr Beale caused the company to pay Eversheds £417,201 in discharge of an invoice addressed to PVH".

So that's just one legal bill we know about. One can safely assume that lawyers' fees were in the many £millions as well.

While workers and creditor businesses ended up going bust, it's nice to know that the lawyers and the accountants and financial engineers of the West Midlands did not go without.

So it would appear that financial engineering and financial and legal services were the real winners in the 'Win Win' corporate structures, and they seemed to manage being promptly paid without too much difficulty.

So, while you can spend some time railing against the Phoenix 4 for what they extracted from the business, do not forget what the lawyers and accountants managed (again perfectly legally) to get from the exercise as well. As David Bailey points out in his blog, it's nice work if you can get it.

What it does show, again, is that we have spent far too long over the last 20 years rewarding financial and corporate engineers, when we should have been spending time rewarding real engineers.

John Clancy is a former Birmingham City Councillor and a former solicitor.