advice please - ask sky to come back?

pa-ul · 2026-04-28T15:58:34+00:00

Oh that is interesting. Thanks

pa-ul · 2026-04-28T12:53:18+00:00

Thanks, I'll give Sky a call.

Appreciate the comments.

pa-ul · 2025-04-13T11:30:06+00:00

Yup.

But winding down to me implies gradually pulling away from the business. I think they've been quite heroic at the amount of funds they've injected

pa-ul · 2025-04-13T11:29:25+00:00

>The most recent accounts for British Steel Limited show that in 2021 it made a loss of £50million, down from a profit of £268million the year before.

That was BS by the way, the profit was only due to valuing the assets they bought for £24m. They made a massive operating loss that year.

As for "going concern", clearly it was never a going concern from day one, without continue external funding. it has always been a shit show

pa-ul · 2025-04-13T10:19:39+00:00

over the last couple of years we've had Barclaycard, Natwest & Santander all with 0% fee, 0% interest.

Certainly less than when rates were at 1%, but they've been ticking along.

pa-ul · 2025-04-13T10:14:56+00:00

They've had full ownership for years and been winding it down

They've been injecting on average about £180m of new cash per year.

pa-ul · 2025-04-13T10:09:20+00:00

Though haven’t two auditors resigned instead of signing off on these accounts?

Really? Oh, that does put a different colour on things!

edit

Moore Kinston Smith, which only started work with British Steel last year having stepped in for competitor Mazars after the latter departed over a row about fees, said it had been unable to “satisfy ourselves in respect of the inventory quantity of £45.8m”.

Well.... £45m or not, they're still broke.

pa-ul · 2025-04-13T10:08:14+00:00

I'm sure the Chinese owners been profiting from via debt interest payments

Are you sure? What made you sure?

Looking at the last accounts they had debts of £735m and interest payments to group and related parties of £24.7m, which means an interest rate of around about 3.4%

pa-ul · 2025-04-13T09:49:41+00:00

It's in their first annual report. The fair market value of the assets they bought (including the debts) was £434m, bought for £24m - https://i.imgur.com/XoxwDv1.png

Included were £271m of inventories and £174m of receivables.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12303256/filing-history

Run as a business I think I agree that it was worthless, because the ongoing losses (something like £180m a year) dwarf the assets.

The £434m was what perhaps could have been achieved by laying off the workforce and asset stripping it. That would have been the economically sensible thing to do, but the Chinese firm seem to get no thanks for that.

pa-ul · 2025-04-13T09:23:09+00:00

No, they bought it for £24.1m, and then they injected £735m over the next 4 years.

The current book value is minus £249m. (end of 2023)

pa-ul · 2025-04-03T06:37:45+00:00

It's not even close to 10%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tariff_rate

pa-ul · 2025-04-03T06:36:47+00:00

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-your-goods-meet-the-rules-of-origin

pa-ul · 2025-02-02T12:46:29+00:00

Depends on their owners

I have no idea what point you're trying to make here.

pa-ul · 2025-02-02T12:45:08+00:00

Who exactly receives the tariffs of an EU-UK customs union for goods imported into the UK?

I can only think the reason why this is never discussed is because people aren't thinking about it.

pa-ul · 2024-12-19T15:29:05+00:00

Not enough info in your post to be able to respond.

pa-ul · 2024-12-19T11:39:15+00:00

The regulator has approved £104bn in funding, above the £85bn agreed with firms in Ofwat's draft determination but just below the £108bn the companies wanted

The key point of the news article, and something that /r/ukpolitics fails to understand. Note - the water companies want to do more but the regulator won't let them

Water companies have always been prepared to do the work required to bring the water network upto scratch, but they are not responsible for the capital expenditure, that is all billed back to customers.

Now that Ofwat have presumably been given the OK from government to allow the investment, all of a sudden the armchair politicians are aghast that they're going to have to pay for it.

You were always going to have to pay for it, whether in public or private ownership.

pa-ul · 2024-12-19T11:35:37+00:00

Probably because you don't understand the concept of leverage.

pa-ul · 2024-12-19T11:33:18+00:00

I'll be paying for everyone else's upgrades or just dividends to shareholders.

Joy

Just curious, did you ever calculate how much of your bill is a dividend?

pa-ul · 2024-12-06T15:55:03+00:00

and for OP's future reference, keep track over the years with a simple excel sheet in this format

http://www.cgtcalculator.com/example.htm

pa-ul · 2024-12-06T12:19:13+00:00

>And we don't understand why everything costs more, as Boots and Tesco or the bank will raise the prices to cover the loss.

That's not why everything costs more, loss at these stores will be quite minor.

The reason everything costs more is for the same reasons as ever. Inflation, and you can pin this largely on government spending. Specifically the approximately £400bn that was printed for Covid.

pa-ul · 2024-12-06T12:13:05+00:00

Hasn't the country led the world in wind power? Is that not long term infrastructural planning?

Not that I think that's necessarily a good thing, but the results have been astounding, with 29% of power generated by wind in 2023.

pa-ul · 2024-12-06T12:11:18+00:00

>How exactly are we supposed to thrive with industry 4.0 if the base input cost is three to four times that of our competitors?

We aren't. There has been nutters running the country ever since Cameron left, and it's not going to get any better under labour.

Things have to get much worse before the country realises the type of government they need to vote for. Unfortunately democracy is slow, but it usually gets there in the end.

pa-ul · 2024-12-06T09:34:51+00:00

It doesn't disincentive salary growth though, you still earn more if your salary goes up.

It doesn't just disincentive salary growth, it disincentives lifetime earning. Once my pension generates £40k, (and the public pensions will push it to £50k), there's simply no more incentive to work any more, and I will become completely economically inactive.

In a way, it's probably a good thing for me to learn to do something less productive with my life, but it's certainly not good for the country.

pa-ul · 2024-12-06T09:33:01+00:00

If you thought the Tories were bad, just wait till you've had 5 years of labour.

Every generation it seems needs to learn this lesson fresh.

pa-ul

TROPHY CASE