February 18, 2017

Port Talbot boss mulls Tata buyout

According to ITV, Stuart Wilkie is leading a team that could bid to take over the business, potentially saving up to 15,000 jobs. Mr Wilkie is expected to formally reveal his plans later today, according to reports. So far, the only potential bidder for Tata’s UK operation is Liberty House,

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SEC probes ExxonMobil over asset values

©AFP The US financial regulator has launched a probe into ExxonMobil, questioning how the country’s largest oil group reports the value of its assets and reserves, and discloses the potential impact of climate change on its business. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s inquiries further intensify regulatory pressures on the company,

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Bowmer and Kirkland Work on Richmond School Makeover

An educational institution in the London Borough of Richmond was reportedly in a poor state of affairs indeed, but the building and construction industry ensured that the school is now back to the standard that it should have been in all along. The Queen’s Church of England Primary School in

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CALA Group Generate Growth in Housing Sector

The worry that not enough homes are being built in the United Kingdom under this Tory government is at least being assuaged a little by the consistent efforts of CALA Group, a building and construction company that has worked extremely hard to produce as many construction and property developments as

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Issue 323 : Dec 2024

February 18, 2017

Port Talbot boss mulls Tata buyout

According to ITV, Stuart Wilkie is leading a team that could bid to take over the business, potentially saving up to 15,000 jobs. Mr Wilkie is expected to formally reveal his plans later today, according to reports. So far, the only potential bidder for Tata’s UK operation is Liberty House, part of the Gupta family’s group of companies. Liberty House last month bought two previously mothballed Tata plants in Lanarkshire and has said it would consider a move for the rest of the Indian conglomerate’s UK facilities. Speaking to Construction News, the Gupta Group’s Jay Hambro said that it would be more likely to launch a bid if the government threw its weight behind the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon project, which could help drive down energy costs. Unions have cautiously backed Mr Wilkie’s plans for a buyout, but reports suggest the plan would still require funding, including a £100m cash injection. Source link

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SEC probes ExxonMobil over asset values

©AFP The US financial regulator has launched a probe into ExxonMobil, questioning how the country’s largest oil group reports the value of its assets and reserves, and discloses the potential impact of climate change on its business. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s inquiries further intensify regulatory pressures on the company, which is being probed separately by New York state’s attorney-general of over whether its public statements on climate change matched its internal assessments. More On this topic IN Energy In a statement on Tuesday evening, Exxon said it was “fully complying with the SEC request for information and are confident our financial reporting meets all legal and accounting requirements”. It gave no further details on the investigation, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The SEC declined to comment. Last week it emerged that Eric Schneiderman, New York attorney-general, was investigating Exxon’s decisions not to take large charges to its profits for writedowns in the values of its assets following the fall in oil prices. That move built on the probe he launched last year into the company’s statements on climate change.  The SEC is now also looking at Exxon’s reporting of its reserves, asset valuations and writedowns, as well as its disclosures on the risks that climate change creates for its business. Exxon said that the SEC was “the appropriate entity to examine issues related to impairment, reserves and other communications important to investors”.  Large European oil companies have several times in recent years taken hefty dents to their profits for writing down the value of their assets, with Royal Dutch Shell reporting an $8.2bn writedown last October. In the past two years Chevron, the second-largest US oil group, has also started reporting these asset impairments, taking a $1.96bn hit last year and a $2.8bn charge in July.  Exxon, however, has booked few of these charges. In a presentation to investors posted on its website, it showed total impairments after tax during 2008-15 of less than $1bn. The charges are not cash items, and are typically disregarded by analysts. However Paul Sankey of Wolfe Research argued in a note last week that the company’s decision not to report asset writedowns was one cause of “a constant frustration with ExxonMobil’s lack of disclosure of many elements of its business”. One reason for the divergence between Exxon and European oil groups such as Shell is that it reports under the US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, while non-US companies use the International Financial Reporting Standards, which set tougher requirements for asset valuations. Under US GAAP, assets have to be written down only if their expected undiscounted cash flows are less than book value. In Exxon’s annual report for 2015, filed to the SEC in February, it said it had tested its “major long-lived assets” that were most at risk for potential impairment, and decided that their expected future cash flows were still higher than their book values. Companies are allowed some leeway in determining those expected cash flows, including choosing price forecasts, and Exxon warned in February that if prices fell short of its expectations it could still have to write down assets.  However, it said, the projections it used were “generally consistent with the long-term price forecasts published by third-party industry experts.” Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Source link

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Bowmer and Kirkland Work on Richmond School Makeover

An educational institution in the London Borough of Richmond was reportedly in a poor state of affairs indeed, but the building and construction industry ensured that the school is now back to the standard that it should have been in all along. The Queen’s Church of England Primary School in the wealthy Richmond borough was apparently in a bad state of affairs, with lack of lighting and heat distribution that was costing the educational establishment a great deal of money to maintain. The school therefore took upon itself to resolve to rebuilding measures that would help to resolve these problems and enlisted the help of consulting expertise firm Pick Everard to see what could be done. With the government backing of a staggering £4.2 million, Pick Everard advised them on the different steps that they would need to take in order to make the school a safer and better place for its pupils. Eventually, a construction contractual company known as Bowmer and Kirkland were hired to carry out and finish the various ambitious engineering and construction implementations that would help restore the school to an appropriate standard fit for study and education. A new building was designed in order to comply with these demands. It included the building of a corridor down the middle as well as classrooms with same-floor access to the playground thus making it a geographically more sensible location that would be able to cope with the excited rush of pupils running out after the eagerly awaited end of term bell. Similarly, other facilities were built into the school by Bowmer and Kirkland contractors, such as designs to ensure that as much heat energy and water were saved as possible in order to make the building itself more sustainable. Bowmer and Kirkland also installed a “daylight dimming” system that would enable more lights to be switched so that pupils could benefit from natural sunlight instead of artificial bulbs.

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CALA Group Generate Growth in Housing Sector

The worry that not enough homes are being built in the United Kingdom under this Tory government is at least being assuaged a little by the consistent efforts of CALA Group, a building and construction company that has worked extremely hard to produce as many construction and property developments as possible this year. Inside the doors of the Legal & General Capital sector, CALA has shown that its diligence and hard work over the year has ensured that it is able to generate even greater amounts of house building revenue and investments than it could have done without them. Through the efforts and hard work of CALA, Legal & General Capital have already been able to invest no less than £8 billion into improving the infrastructure that will help to provide more and more land development as well as employment opportunities for people all over the country. Legal & General Capital’s respected MD Paul Stamworth explains that in the three years since acquiring almost half of CALA’s equity, CALA has generated profit growth that has soared from an already impressive 35 per cent to a staggering 370 per cent in the last financial year. Their investment in CALA was clearly a wise one and CALA’s consistent good maintenance of trading and property building means that it will be in good stead to challenge the threats posed to the English economy through the exit from the European Union. Even at this moment, CALA reports that its trading results in the first few weeks of the New Year were very good, and the building company has acquired vital planning permission to work on 15 areas around the UK that will create1533 brand new properties with a development venture valued at £648 million. Additional thanks must be made to CALA now that Legal & General Capital intends to feed an extra £15 billion for other enterprises in the United Kingdom.

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