The Guardian: Macho cash
25 May 2005
The “headline” profits of £10.3bn trumpeted by Vodafone yesterday might have qualified as the Biggest Profit Turned By A British Company – except that would have been misleading.
Followers of the bulge bracket corporate scene this year will have first seen Shell declared as the leader in February with £9.4bn, only to be eclipsed a month later by HSBC with £9.6bn. But comparing the heavyweights of corporate Britain has an air of comparing apples, pears – and oranges, too.
Shell, like other oil majors, declares its headline profit as “net income”, that is, net of tax. HSBC goes for old-fashioned “pre-tax profit” while Vodafone’s £10.3bn was before nasty bits like £14.7bn of goodwill amortisation. The pre-tax loss was actually £4.7bn.
This is not to say Vodafone is doing badly. In fact, it is a cash machine, producing £12.7bn of the hard stuff over the past 12 months. All that’s holding it back on paper are the accounting costs of its rapid expansion. But until those (non-cash) costs are absorbed, it would be wrong to hand Vodafone the corporate crown, and those media brickbats that tend to go with the title.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1491505,00.html
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Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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