Arcus takes over Forth Ports with a massive offer of £760 million

 

Forth Ports (FPT .L) owns and operates 7 commercial ports throughout UK that are good profit generators. The company announced a significant 10% increase in annual profit in the year 2010 where its pretax profit was £36.6 million on revenues 5% higher at 181.9 million in 2010. According to experts the optimistic prediction for the annual profit of Forth Ports for the previous year was £35.6 million, where practically it crossed the limit and performed exceptionally well.

Arcus European Infrastructure fund posses 23.5% shares in the company. Forth Ports’ Chairman Mr. David Richardson said that till offer from Arcus will give a new opportunity for Forth Ports; shareholders to realize that this investment is at a fair price.

Previously an offer of £745 million was proposed to Forth Ports by Arcus but this was not convincing enough for the company as its shares have also risen up by 12% during the February where the business valued at a worth of around £735 million. After the acceptance of the proposal the company said that although the economic conditions of UK especially in trading is challenging at present, but since the ports have been enjoying good profits and conditions are predicted to become better soon as well, this will surely an encouraging decision for the management.

Inflation impacts the highest UK Household income fall since 1970s

 

A report generated by Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) claims that the people of UK have faced a drastic decrease in living standards for the last 30 years, because of the rapidly increasing inflation and unemployment throughout the region. The average household’s real income has decreased by 1.6% over the three years which contrastingly increased significantly even during the recession.

IFS report emphasized that the reasons for the fall in living standards were not only due to increase in unemployment in various sectors, but the decrease in interest rates from the saving also lead to this decrease. Moreover the tax and benefits that were changed and stagnating the real earnings pay after the eroding effects of inflation are also considered to be prominent factor for the cause.

Unfortunately according to experts the situation is not expected to resolve soon and even after the Government announcement of £111 billion austerity program to over the issue there would be further innovative steps required from the government to completely eliminate all the issues.

According to one of the experts from IFS, the household incomes are probably to level in 2013, where things are expected to become after and government program are most likely to take effect.

The problem of stagnant condition to pertain for sometime is the sluggish economic recovery and weak jobs in the market, where the workers are in no position to demand a pay increase due to the fear of over-target inflation and higher inflation rate. January’s VAT rise was one of the highest rise in Consumer Price Index (CPI) where it hit the margin of 4% pushing the cost of living still further.