How not to manage any business

The chief executive of the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust has sent an email to staff warning them of "catastrophic" money issues. He says he is not sure if staff will be paid in coming months.

Having sent the email, which is understandably worrying staff hugely, he then decided he would be unavailable for comment until Monday. The trust also declined to comment until then.

The email says:

The overshoot on our Income and Expenditure account lies somewhere between £5m and £6m.

This can only be described as catastrophic.

There's a real issue about whether we will be able to pay our staff by August or September.

According to the BBC, the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust needs to make savings of £158m over the next five years due to "government spending cuts" (their words, not mine).

How does it come to this, that a state business thinks it will probably run out of money?