£30 billion for a phone call - or is it £160 billion?
Anything the sleaze balls in government can do, the private sector can do better. That includes cheating on numbers.
Today, Vodafone grandly announced that it had made £8.8 billion profit, and CNN announced that Vodafone had made a £21.9 billion loss (the colonials have a quiant attachment to the greenback, so they called it $40 billion loss, which sounds even bigger).
The difference in reported profit and loss estimates is a mere £30.7 billion. Given that Vodafone's entire revenues are £29 billion, this is quite a difference. No one is arguing about how much the orally incontinent coughed up for gabbing endlessly on the phone - most of it seems to have come from the Countess herself. But no one can agree whether this was as profitable as peddling cocaine or as efficient as government spending on the NHS.
This particular little argument has been going on for years. Back in 2001 Vodafone was reported as having made either a £7 billion profit or a £10.6 billion loss: that's another £17 billion disappearing down an accounting black hole. Over the last five years, Vodafone has made somewhere between a £40 billion profit and a £120 billion loss.
Woops, there goes £160 billion. Did you see it? No chance.
Of course, the answer is that they are both making a profit and a loss at the same time. They are carefully gouging the Countess every times she picks up her mobile to arrange an urgent smokey bacon frappucino meeting at Starbucks. They are also paying the price for insane acquisitions. Having paid top dollar/pound/euro they are now writing off the value of those investments: that is where the loss comes from.
Having racked up £120 billion of losses by squandering money, we discovered the true value of the acquisitions: a knighthood for the ex-CEO. Government does not understand value or profit or loss, but it does understand big. It always rewards big, in particular the biggest cock-ups. Someone should have told the last CEO that there was no need to spend £120 billion to get a knighthood. Simply slip Anthony Charles Trustme Blair one or two million for a pet project like an Academy, and bingo you get a knighthood for free. Arise Sir Christopher Gent.
Meanwhile, the real mystery is who paid for the £120 billion loss? Step forward the long suffering shareholders who have seen their share price drop by from £3.20 to £1.20. That's smart investment: for every ten pounds you put into Vodafone you can get less £4 back: the other £6 disappears into the pockets of executives and the lucky shareholders of companies which Vodafone has acquired. The only surprise is that such a dismal performance in helping pensioners on their way to poverty was not rewarded with a peerage.
Today, Vodafone grandly announced that it had made £8.8 billion profit, and CNN announced that Vodafone had made a £21.9 billion loss (the colonials have a quiant attachment to the greenback, so they called it $40 billion loss, which sounds even bigger).
The difference in reported profit and loss estimates is a mere £30.7 billion. Given that Vodafone's entire revenues are £29 billion, this is quite a difference. No one is arguing about how much the orally incontinent coughed up for gabbing endlessly on the phone - most of it seems to have come from the Countess herself. But no one can agree whether this was as profitable as peddling cocaine or as efficient as government spending on the NHS.
This particular little argument has been going on for years. Back in 2001 Vodafone was reported as having made either a £7 billion profit or a £10.6 billion loss: that's another £17 billion disappearing down an accounting black hole. Over the last five years, Vodafone has made somewhere between a £40 billion profit and a £120 billion loss.
Woops, there goes £160 billion. Did you see it? No chance.
Of course, the answer is that they are both making a profit and a loss at the same time. They are carefully gouging the Countess every times she picks up her mobile to arrange an urgent smokey bacon frappucino meeting at Starbucks. They are also paying the price for insane acquisitions. Having paid top dollar/pound/euro they are now writing off the value of those investments: that is where the loss comes from.
Having racked up £120 billion of losses by squandering money, we discovered the true value of the acquisitions: a knighthood for the ex-CEO. Government does not understand value or profit or loss, but it does understand big. It always rewards big, in particular the biggest cock-ups. Someone should have told the last CEO that there was no need to spend £120 billion to get a knighthood. Simply slip Anthony Charles Trustme Blair one or two million for a pet project like an Academy, and bingo you get a knighthood for free. Arise Sir Christopher Gent.
Meanwhile, the real mystery is who paid for the £120 billion loss? Step forward the long suffering shareholders who have seen their share price drop by from £3.20 to £1.20. That's smart investment: for every ten pounds you put into Vodafone you can get less £4 back: the other £6 disappears into the pockets of executives and the lucky shareholders of companies which Vodafone has acquired. The only surprise is that such a dismal performance in helping pensioners on their way to poverty was not rewarded with a peerage.
posted by Count Kostov at
1:18 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home