All posts by admin

Factors That Influence Your Property Investment

By admin on

There are many people who look at property investment as an income-generating opportunity. To achieve their goal, they develop a plan to calculate their returns, the total investment required, their income and their present and future expenses. These people also consider the risk-reward ratio before they invest in a property.

You need to have an investment plan that will calculate your total cash outflow and inflow. This will give you an idea on the financial benefit of buying a property and give help you calculate the amount that you need to borrow. If you find it difficult to calculate these details you can use software packages that are available in the market.

When buying a property you need to calculate

a) The loan required
b) The cost of the purchase
c) The cost of maintaining the property

Loan Required

Most people take out a loan to finance their property investment. Here are a few factors that you need to consider when taking a loan

i) There many people who pay only the interest on the loan that they have taken. The interest that they pay can be deducted from their income. People usually opt for repayment of both the principle and the interest when the rate of interest is high.

ii) You also need to decide on the type of loan that you require. You can take out a fixed rate loan, floating rate loan, line of credit and split loan. If you feel that interest rate is likely to rise then it is best that you opt for fixed rate loan. A variable rate loan is usually opted for when the interest rate is likely to fall.

iii) Most lenders will give you loan only up to 90 percent of the property value. If you want to borrow more you will have to take mortgage insurance on the property, which could be expensive. The loan that you take will depend on your requirement and risk appetite. People who expect property prices to rise will gamble on the rise and have less equity in the property.

Once you have decided on the loan amount and the type of loan, you need to calculate the borrowing cost and cash-flow you need to generate to repay the loan taken.

Cost of Purchase

Land cost is not the only factor that you need to consider when you buy a property. You need to include expenses on legal representation, stamp duty, surveys, insurance, registration of title, investigations, valuation fee, commission to real estate agents and all other expenses you incur when buying a property.

Cost of maintaining the property

You also need to calculate the cost of maintaining the property. Some maintenance cost that you pay include water tax and water charges, maintenance and repair charges, local taxes, expenses on maintaining the books, insurance, security expenses and all other expenses that you incur in ensuring the safety of property.

Therefore it is important that all property investments must be made only after careful evaluation the financial feasibility of your investment.

Controlling The Financial Performance Of Your Business

By admin on

There are numerous factors which impact on the performance and viability of your business. It is therefore imperative that you monitor and control your financial performance. Debt control and budgeting are two elements of this, and of particular importance is your business cash flow.

Many profitable businesses have gone under due to a lack of attention to their cash flow; they have insufficient cash available to pay their bills. Thus, you must plan and control your cash flow in order to effectively manage your business.

Some strategies that may assist in this include:

* Increasing the speed of cash receipts by good debt control strategies

* Avoiding excessive stock holdings by managing stock levels and obtaining reliable, prompt suppliers

* Planning the purchase of equipment and other capital expenditure for periods when surplus funds exist

* Planning to have sufficient reserves to carry your business through the inevitable periods when unexpected expenses are incurred

* Avoiding excessive investment in plant, equipment and other fixed assets which may leave too little working capital available (particularly in periods of falling prices, declining sales or increasing interest rates)

* Avoiding over borrowing as this may place a strain on working capital, loans still have to be repaid even if revenue is decreasing

* Maintain adequate working capital to fund the growth as increasing sales also means increasing costs, your working capital requirements therefore, need to be continually reviewed

* Delaying outgoings by taking advantage of the credit terms offered by your suppliers and paying when it suits your cash flow

* Reducing outgoings by taking advantage of discounts when appropriate and working capital permits

* And most importantly, regularly comparing your actual cash flows to your budgeted cash flows, analysing the differences, and taking action based on this analysis

Subscribe to the UMACS Business Zone fortnightly newsletter which gives you great tools, tips and ideas on how to manage and grow your business. Subscribe now and receive a FREE e-book “Relationships that Show the Health of Your Business”. www.umacs-business-solutions.com/umacs-business-zone.html

Gary Cardone Knows A Thing Or Two About Energy

By admin on

Gary Cardone And His Contributions To The Energy Industry

Gary Cardone has been linked to the energy industry for quite a while. He has a long history with such major providers as Dynegy and Accord Energy.

After the profitable sale of Accord Energy Gary Cardone served to create Dynegy Europe which developed into one of the most productive U.S. energy companies operating in Europe. After three years of operations it had obtained 87% of the Storage of Natural Gas in great britan, had 600 staff members with power and gas positions in Germany and Holland with establishments in Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Holland.

Gary Cardone was managing director of Dynegy UK and Dynegy Europe. Cardone, who had been earlier director and gm of Energy Trading at Dynegy UK, took over responsibilities for all of Dynegy’s UK and European gas, power and crude oil trading and marketing activities and development of new business prospects.

When Gary Cardone was chosen as managing director of Dynegy UK and Dynegy Europe, Chuck Watson, chairman and chief executive officer of Dynegy, said, “We are pleased that Gary has decided to tackle the job of managing director as Dynegy moves to participate in the deregulating energy markets in Europe”

Gary did exactly that.

Cardone joined up with Dynegy in 1987 and relocated to London in 1994 in order to develop its European energy organization. The business began trading the U.K. and Scandinavian power markets.

Gary has worked in all sectors of Dynegy’s commercial activities across the US and Canada. Cardone joined Dynegy UK in 1993 and was a key component in the formation of Accord Energy, a joint venture between BG and Dynegy. When operational control of Accord was transferred to Centrica at the begining of 1997, Gary became director and general manager of Energy Trading in the recently formed Dynegy UK.

Gary Cardone ran lots of functions purchasing as well as managing gas acquisition with the North Eastern States, Gulf of Mexico and flows to California as well as imports from Canada. Left in 1993 to build up a business for NGCH in Europe.

Accord Energy was a joint venture whereby Gary was the architect of between British Gas PLC and Natural Gas Clearinghouse to exploit the inefficiencies inside gas and electric industry in britain.

Following the successful sale of Accord Energy Cardone helped make Dynegy Europe which became one of the successful U.S. energy companies doing work in Europe. After three years of operation it had acquired 87% of all Storage of Natural Gas in england, had 600 employees with power and gas jobs in German and Holland with office buildings in Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Holland.

Gary Cardone functioned as Commercial Advisor with a large Private Equity firm leading them on discovering deals on the sell and buying side. He focused on opportunity to co-invest, midstream acquisitions including pipelines, expansions, platforms, and divestments of gas and oil properties, midstream assets, and renewable assets.

Accord Energy was a joint venture that Gary Cardone was the architect of between British Gas PLC and Natural Gas Clearinghouse to take advantage of the inefficiencies within the natural gas and electric industry in great britain.

Top 4 Construction Accident Statistics

By admin on

Like any other working environment, those in the construction industry may experience work accidents from time to time. If the employee’s injury can be directly attributed to the mistakes of the employer, these accidents can lead to successful construction accident claims.

While making work accident claims can help many of those injured on construction sites, it is far better if employees and workers are made well aware of the dangers, and the correct procedures are put into place to prevent construction accidents from happening in the first place. This would lead to a reduction in construction accidents and fewer construction accident claims being made.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) provides statistics related to construction accidents – here are four interesting construction accident statistics for those who want to learn more about the potential dangers of working on a construction site.

1. Construction accidents have the most fatal injuries

With 29.4 percent of all fatal injuries in 2008/9 attributable to the construction industry, construction accidents cause the most fatal injuries of all the main industry groups. With 53 fatal construction accident injuries in 2008/9, this was, however, a 26 percent decrease on the previous year’s figure.

2. Major construction injuries are decreasing

Since 1999/2000 there has been an overall decrease in the number of reported major injuries occurring in the construction industry. In fact, the overall rate for 2008/9 is 36 percent down on that for 1999/2000. Despite this reduction, there are still more major injuries reported among those working on construction sites than there are in any other main industry group. There was also a steady decrease in over-3-day construction injuries during this time, totalling a 43 percent decrease since 1999/2000.

3. The most common construction accidents involve handling and slips and trips

Construction accidents most commonly involve handling (29 percent of accidents) and slips and trips (22 percent). These are also the most common types of accidents reported across all the main industries. However, construction differed from other industries in the overall quantity of injuries resulting from falling from a height. This accounts for 17 percent of construction injuries compared to only 8 percent overall. Moving or falling objects were also more of a cause of accidents in construction, with 16 percent compared to an overall 11 percent. Contact with moving machinery, electricity and collapses/overturns all had a higher occurrence in construction than in other industries.

4. Less serious construction injuries are under-reported

A higher proportion of reported construction accidents are serious compared to those in other industries. However, Labour Force Survey (LFS) data indicates that this is because less serious construction injuries are under-reported. The LFS estimated rate of non fatal injuries for 2007/8 was 1427 per 100,000 compared to the actual rate reported of 880 per 100,000. This indicates some work accident victims may be missing out on the compensation they deserve by failing to make legitimate construction accident claims for less serious injuries.

If you have suffered as a result of a construction accident, you may be able to make a construction accident claim. Find out more about work accident claims by contacting a legitimate claims management company as soon as possible.

Chemical Hazard List For The Chemical Industry

By admin on

When we are dealing with chemicals in the workplaces, we will be exposed to the chemicals-associated potential hazards that would harm our health and safety, environment and plant facilities. Adequate information about chemical hazards will greatly help us during hazard identification study and ensure no hazards left to be identified.

The list below shows hazards those are associated with chemicals preservation, loading and unloading operation, transportation, usage or maintenance work.

1. Fire. This may be caused by flammable, combustible or reactive chemicals.
2. Explosion. It comes with flammable, combustible or reactive chemicals.
3. Heat. As the result of reaction of the chemicals with another one.
4. Toxic gas. Such gas is also possible to be introduced when two or more chemicals reacting or through decomposition reaction.
5. Corrosive vapors.
6. Harmful to human health: eye irritation, corneal damage, eye burn, skin irritation, skin burn, headache, dizziness, nervous system depression, liver damage, kidney damage, heart damage, tract irritation, death, etc. Each chemical may have different health effects and this information can be extracted from the MSDS.
7. Environment contamination. Chemical spill and waste are common environment contamination factors.

The first step that has to be followed is to make a list containing hazardous chemicals used in the plant site. After that, refer to each MSDS for identifying the hazards. From MSDS, we can recognize different hazard control for each chemical.
Some chemicals that are commonly found in chemical plant operation are hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide, hydrogen peroxide, phosphoric acid, formaldehyde, methanol, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, hydrogen and etc.

Dont forget to update the chemical hazards list regularly or when change exists. This is so important and will directly affect the hazard identification list.