Business to Business News

Energy performance certificates are all over the news and Internet recently, they are so much in the news that people are starting to use them as a every day word such as E P C and other variations. The term refers to a certificate you need when trying to sell your home. Here are the rules

“Energy Performance Certificate - new rules This bit is important because under new regulations, from October 1st 2008, you - the homeowner - are responsible for the Energy Performance Certificate. So you need to check your estate agent doesn’t trip-up and potentially land you both with a £200 fine, per instance! From October 1st 2008, an Energy Performance Certificate must now be available:

when the property is viewed;

when written information is provided on request;

before contracts are exchanged.

Sales particulars: Displaying the Energy Performance Certificate

As a minimum, the asset ratings graphs (see top picture) from your EPC must be included within the sales particulars (including electronic) if they contain two or more of the following:

A photograph of the building or any room inside the building

A floor plan of the building

A description of the size of the rooms in the building.

Advertising

With window cards and newspaper adverts you are not legally obliged to include the rating graphs, although the Government suggests it would be good practice to do so if they contain any two of the above items.

Commissioned

By ‘commissioned’, the Government means all documents - including the EPC - within your HIP must have been ordered with a commitment to pay. There should also be an expectation that all documents will be made available within 28 days. If they are not (unlikely in most cases), the person responsible for marketing your home must make reasonable efforts to obtain them as soon as possible, or risk pain of penalty (see below). From 31st December 2008 a Home Information Pack must be available from the time it is first placed on the market (subject to Govt review) - This date ends the transition period allowing Hips only to be commissioned before marketing commences.

Enforcement penalty fine (£200)

If you - or your estate agent - is responsible for actively marketing your home, there is pain in store for not obtaining a HIP: £200 penalty fine (repeatable for each day). The EPC, however, is solely the homeowners responsibility; although it would be a daft estate agent that attempts to market a home without an EPC in the HIP because they too would kop for a fine. Estate agents are automatically reported to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) too; with continued naughtiness leading to a banning order.”

Personally I think the whole thing is another way the government is making money and probably putting thousands of pounds worth of claims into there own greedy pockets through the expenses claims that there has been massive uproar over. What do you think of E P C’ s? Technically the information that i given will either make your house more salable or not, as if you are given a rating of F or G then your house will have a high running cost when it comes to things like heating.

The UK industry had big contribution from music acts including Iron Maiden and Coldplay, as exports touched record levels.

Despite worst economic conditions, British musical talent’s royalties from abroad jumped by 15% during 2008, as reported by PRS for Music, the sole collector of royalties for composers and songwriters.

According to PRS’s chief executive, Steve Porter, music in the UK is a great success story and Britain has become one home of the world musical talent.

The royalties earned by the UK acts touring jumped to £139.6 million in 2008 from £121.2 million in 2007. The rise was mainly due to increased demand for acts including Girls Aloud, Elton John and Mark Knopfler.

According to research conducted by Pollstar, the touring act, Police, was in big demand last year, while groups including The Cure and Spice Girls are also proving more popular abroad.

The British artists found the US market most lucrative, where their revenues rose to £21.7 million. Germany with £15 million was the second biggest generator of royalty, followed by £11.6 million by France. PRS also claimed that international royalties, which stood at £68 million in 1999, have since then more than doubled.

PRS collects and pays royalties to its members whose music is exploited anywhere across the world. This includes, material put online, performances and recordings.

Online bingo has been one of the fastest growing sectors within the online gambling industry in the UK, with white label operators joining the competition. However, reports suggest that this growth has now slowed, mainly as the traditional offline bingo brands such as Mecca have gone online.

UK Online Bingo authority website BingoPort.co.uk reported that the number of people playing real money online bingo in the UK remained flat in the final quarter of 2008, with only a 1 percent increase in player numbers across the board. This follows a large increase of over 10 percent in the September quarter.

Scott Logan, Managing Director of BingoPort.co.uk explained:

“This is the first sign that the UK online bingo market is feeling the effects of both the recession and market saturation. It signals the beginning of what we see as a period of mergers and acquisitions across the industry.”

It was also reported that overall prize values in online bingo rooms decreased for the first time ever as the number of new players has dropped and players are spending less money online.

Scott Logan added:

“This report will not come as a surprise to many industry experts who have been predicting this downturn for some time. We still expect to see strong spending in advertising by the bigger operators as they work to extract the maximum value out of their existing customer base.”

This has been put down to the fight for market share from the big players. Scott Logan said:

“We’re seeing more innovative marketing campaigns from the likes of Foxy Bingo, Gala Bingo, Ladbrokes Bingo and Mecca Bingo. These operators, among others, have introduced a range of different concepts to their real money sites. One of the biggest and most successful of these is free bingo games in between their pay to play games on new sites such as Cheeky Bingo and Minxy Bingo.”

Logan expects this trend to continue:

“In addition, the well established operators are pulling out all of the stops to keep their players from going to competitors. We expect to see a cutthroat 2009.”

White label operators will have to find more innovative ways to try and outwit the big players in the UK bingo market. Things are set to get ugly.

One third of staff at Five, the terrestrial television channel, is going to lose jobs this week.

It is reported that around 100 jobs out of 350 would be made redundant as part of business restructuring to be announced on Thursday. ITV is also considering cutting 500 jobs when it will make announcement of annual results. Read the rest of this entry »

While giants in many industries have been falling victim to economic gloom, British film industry not only beat the gloom but accounted for second highest cinema takings of 31% in a decade. Read the rest of this entry »

British film and television export suffered a big hit for the first time in last 5 years, with an official release mentioning that the export of services and programmes fell during the year.

Britain’s creative industries, which had been highly successful in exporting widely viewed popular programmes, took a major blow. Read the rest of this entry »

Pubs in Britain are selling 20% fewer pints than they were selling 3 years ago as the toughest trading environment continued to make them struggle.

Sales volumes in pubs, for 3 months to September end, declined by 8.1% according to data released by the British Beer & Pub Association. This deterioration in performance is not skewed by the smoking ban in public places introduced in July 2007. This has dashed the sector’s hopes that the ban would be withdrawn or suspended for some time.

The situation is not different in supermarkets and off-licences where a 6% decline in sales is reported, the first drop since early last year, although some industry insiders were dismissing it as supermarket price wars before Christmas.

Trading at Globe Pub Company, owned by Robert Tchenguize, has worsened to such an extent that it led to triggering a “cash trap” clause in a securitised debt agreement, which bars the company from dividend distribution. Loan recall demands from Icelandic bank Kaupthing has forced Tchenguiz, one of highest-profile entrepreneurs in Britain, to sell stakes in Sainsbury’s and Mitchells & Butlers at more than £800m loss.

Punch is another pub badly affected by the slump. It has decided not to pay a final dividend this year.

A large number of lessee publicans have become critical of Punch, Globe and other landlord groups known as pubcos. A member of Fair Pint campaign group, Brian Jacob, alleged that pubcos had been acting irresponsibly the same way as some bankers have been since many years.

All3Media is set to become the largest British-owned TV independent TV producer this year with a turnover of £400m. The producer of TV hits Midsomer Murders and Richard and Judy has increased its turnover by £22m in last 11 months.

The sales are likely to double by the end of this year in August, courtesy a string of acquisitions during the past few months. Acquisition spree has shot up All3Media’s international income by around 33% from 10% of group turnover two years before.

Chief executive and co-founder Steve Morrison earned gross salary and bonuses of £419,000 for the year as against £384,000 in 2006. While the two other directors were paid £60,000 as monitoring fees for their advice, Permira charged a combined £183,000 fees for representatives Carl Parker and Robin Bell-Jones. Earnings that form key measurement for the equity-owned companies increased to £35m in 11 months from £27m in 2006. Interest payments rose to £43m from £8.7m in 2006.

Three foreign-owned groups – the X Factor producer Fremantle, IMG World and Big Brother producer Endemol - ominate the UK’s independent television production. All3Media now becomes the largest operator after these three.

Music retailer HMV is out of the misery of high street in a big way! It has predicted that year end profits will be much higher than targeted. The high expectation is based on the big jump in sales of its gaming and technology division.

The company started its execution of three-year turnaround plan this year. But Simon Fox, chief executive of HMV, is very much impressed with the current performance and is confident that company will achieve results beyond its targets in the first year itself. The company registered a jump of 14% in UK sales in the first four months of the current year.

Mr Fox, had initially predicted year end profits of around £43m-£53m. He is now expecting that it will be around £46m-£58m. A commendable performance indeed!

Analysts are of the opinion that company is benefiting due to the rise in its sales of computer games and consoles. The sales rise is attributed to drop in CD sales due to online download.

 The gaming and technology division will also be benefiting from sales of Grand Theft Auto IV, which sold more than half a million copies on very first day of its launch. HMV also registered 6.6% rise in Waterstone’s, through strong advertising campaigns and loyalty card with membership of 1.3 millions.

Disney’s profits have risen by an impressive 22 per cent. The profits have shot up largely because its movies and theme parks have proved popular with consumers.

Disney ha managed to hold on to its margins and increase its profits inspite of fears of an impending economic slowdown. After coming up with good numbers, Disney elaborated it earned nearly $1.13bn or £0.6bn in the three months (ended 29 March), compared with $931m earned a year earlier.

A weakened dollar helped spur visits to its US theme parks from overseas. Its studio revenue increased 18 per cent, with ‘Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds’ and ‘National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets’ scoring with fans.

Analysts had expected the weak US economy and falling consumer spending might have a negative effect on Disney theme parks, but the firm declared its parks and resorts revenue increased 11 per cent to $2.7bn. Attendance and spending at Disney’s Paris and Orlando parks gained from an Easter holiday, which fell in the reporting period, the firm said.