Merger of Everything Everywhere, T-mobile & Orange Essay

Merger of Everything Everywhere, T-mobile & Orange - Essay Example The new company would have 28.4 million subscribers (T-mobile UK, 8 September 2009). Another benefit of the merger would be the improvement of the network coverage but also of the network quality (T-mobile UK, 8 September 2009). According to Gervais Pellissier, the CFO of France Telecom, the merger would help both firms to increase their competitiveness in the UK market, but also ‘to develop new services and technologies’ (T-mobile UK, 8 September 2009). In the long term, the merger would result to the decrease of the firms’ operational costs, at least by ?445m annually (OFCOM 2010). The merger was set under examination aiming to ensure that it does not violate the British and the European laws on competition. The case was brought before the European Commission, which decided, in the 1st of March 2010, that the merger would be permitted (Orange Newsroom March 2010) since the terms that the European Commission had set were met. In accordance with OFCOM European Com mission allowed the merger mostly because of the commitments of the firms in terms of ‘spectrum and network sharing’ (OFCOM 2010). ... he specific name was chosen in order to highlight the firm’s potential to offer to its customers ‘instant access to the world around them, to everything everywhere’ (T-mobile UK, 1 July 2010). In practice, the specific strategy, i.e. the use of a new name for the firm resulting from the merger, can be characterized as rather risky, taking into consideration the similar practices of other competitors in the UK mobile industry, which tend to use their own brands. On the other hand, the customers of the new firm, Everything Everywhere Ltd would have the chance to use the mobile networks of both brands, being significantly benefited compared to the customers of other mobile operators in UK (Meyer 2010). At this point, it would be necessary to check whether the merger actually benefited Orange and T-mobile. At a first level, it seems that T-mobile has been more benefited from the specific initiative, compared to Orange, which is already well established in the UK marke t. Indeed, the performance of T-mobile across UK can be characterized as low (BBC News 2010); the merger with Orange would help the firm to improve its market position ‘overnight’ (Shaun Collins in BBC News 2010). After the merger, the position of the two brands in the UK industry is still different; indeed, Orange is still more powerful than T-mobile, with a network of about 17 million subscribers, compared to the 13 million subscribers of T-mobile (Meyer 2010). Moreover, Virgin mobile offers to its customers the potential to use the network of Orange, when being in areas where the Virgin mobile network is not available (Virgin Mobile 2011, Mandalia 2011). The firm that resulted from the merger, Everything Everywhere Limited has a key share in the UK mobile market, reaching ‘the 28 million

History of Taxation in Britain Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

History of Taxation in Britain - Research Paper Example The twentieth century started with high spending, which was based on war spending. The First and Second World Wars both lead to very large increases in public spending and rather smaller increases in tax. The Korean War is reported to have a discernible effect, but neither the Falklands (1982) nor the Gulf (1991) conflict seems to have had an impact on spending. The need for more revenue during the war led to increases in tax rates, increases in the coverage of existing taxes and the introduction of wholly new taxes. Perhaps the most dramatic change was to income tax. Prior to the war, income tax had never been a mass tax. It was first introduced in 1799 and was permanently in place from 1842, but there were still fewer than 4 million taxpayers in 1938. By the end of the war, the number of taxpaying families had increased to over 12 million, an increase which was sustained into the following decades. The two marked periods of growth in the last quarter of the century, in the early 1980s and the late 1980s / early 1990s; both the period experienced turmoil in the economic activities of the country, which led both to shrinking GDP and to higher cyclical government spending as unemployment increased gradually. ... pretend as, for each UK household the government allocated 14,000 and 15,000, the amount is equivalent to the post-tax income a childless couple would need to be in the middle of the income distribution, or the amount required by the retired UK national. Local taxes have been an important type of revenue for the UK economy, it accounted for one-third of total revenues, however, its importance declined after World War I and II. 'In the early twentieth century, these accounted for up to a third of total revenues, but their importance declined as the taxes required to pay for both World Wars were raised at the national level', (A. Dilnot and C. Emmerson, 'The economic environment', in A. H. Halsey with J. Webb, Twentieth Century British Social Trends, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2000). Revising the British history of tax returns, local taxes, (chiefly a property tax called 'rates', which had both business and household components) was estimated to be seven percent of GGR. However, after 196 0, the local taxes represented more than 10 percent of GGR, and have remained consistent throughout. However, from 2000 onwards, local taxes have again become much less significant, representing only between 3 and 4 percent of revenues in the last decade of the twentieth century.  Ã‚