Fuzzle's comments are very interesting....
Fuzzle, firstly welcome to pprune and thank you (and your accountant friend!) very much for helping to clarify the situation. We can all sleep easy now.
It was very good of you to selflessly go through 472 pages of HSBC's accounts purely for the benefit of all of those wannabes on this forum....
I am currently out of the country at present so do not have access to the stat accounts, but will go through the stats on my return. I may also ask an accountant friend for help out.
P.S. Directors are indeed required to prepare the accounts on a going concern or break-up basis, however they normally only include a one liner like HSBC - I seem to remember that CTC (given it's a smaller & a private company)had to go into more detail.
Choosing a bank to compare CTC's stats to is also very interesting - do you know something we don't?! I seem to remember that Northern Rock, HBOS, Lehman Brothers etc etc all considered themselves going concerns...
Lastly, I have nothing against CTC and agree that accounts are subjective. They are already well out of date and I have no idea how badly CTC is currently performing, but please note TheBeaks' spot-on last comment.