Management at Powerscreen , the crisis-wracked Northern Ireland engineering group, must feel as if trapped in one of their own heavy-duty crushing and sieving machines. The corporate pain level was further intensified this week with a further nose-dive in the share price, both before and after the board announcement that the group was expecting a pre-tax loss of £65 million sterling in the year to end March, a significant worsening on earlier anticipated losses of £10 million.

The London Stock Exchange has now joined the Serious Fraud Squad and a growing list of other professional parties sifting around in the Powerscreen mess. It will examine dealings in the shares last week when a large bloc of the equity was jettisoned at a 20 per cent discount on the last market price.

The £65 million in blood-letting comprises group profits of around £26.6 million, wiped out by losses of £58.6 million from Matbro, the subsidiary at the centre of the crisis with additional provisions and charges of £33 million. On a day-to-day trading basis the forecast indicates that group trading has worsened with earnings projections way off kilter. The company says in a statement that "profitability in aggregate of group businesses has fallen short of management's expectations by approximately £10 million". A spokesman has intimated that the Matbro disclosures had a "knock on effect" on the group and damaged customers confidence.

Further as yet unspecified asset disposals are in train to apply a ligature to the group's gaping wounds to help it "concentrate on core businesses which continue to trade profitably". Group auditors KPMG have yet to complete their trawl through the 1997/98 accounts, the Serious Fraud Squad are shifting paper and vague mutterings of legal actions can be heard from the wings. Can things get much worse? Quite possibly.