. FINANCIAL NOTES.
One of the brightest spots in the financial situation continues to be the satisfactory position of the National Accounts so far, at all events, as the current year is concerned, though I would again sound a note of warning as to these figures being regarded as necessarily an indica- tion of some huge surplus in the Budget. Up to date, however, the results, are good, mainly owing to the reduction in Expenditure, and at present it looks as though there might be a surplus at the end of the year of not far short of £50,000,000, some part of which will be due to revenue having exceeded expectations, but the larger Part to expenditure having fallen much. below the official forecasts of a year ago.
At the meeting. held last week of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, Lord Ashfield took the opportunity of correcting a slight misunder- standing which he said had arisen with regard to his remarks on a previous occasion on the subject of inde- pendent omnibus competition. Lord Ashfield made it very clear that he was not asking for any public control of transport services in the interests of his particular groups of companies, but in the interests of London's traffic service as a whole. How greatly the company is adversely affected in its finances by the fall in the American exchange was very clearly brought out by Lord Ashfield. He explained that the 6 per cent. Income Bonds, owing to their right to payment of interest and principal on a dollar basis and free of Income Tax, cost the company £527,000 for interest last year instead of £400,000, had the exchange and Income Tax been as in 1908 when they were issued. It seems useless, there- fore, to expect any arrangement for reorganizing the capital of the group until the American exchange stands at a very different level from that which prevails to-day.
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The Prudential Assurance continues to eclipse its own previous records, and, as will be seen from the report of the annual meeting of the company which appeared in the Spectator last week, the present bonus just declared of 2 per Cent. upon original sums on policies in the " ordinary " branch is the highest in the history of the company. The distribution is the more satisfactory, moreover, when it is noted that it was not declared until 1500,000 from the year's surplus had been added to the Investments Reserve Fund, raising that Fund to £8,000,000. The actual surplus for the year was 12,251,000, an amount which not ' only justifies the present distribution, but which augurs well for the outlook. The total assets of the "Prudential" now stand at the colossal sum of 1158,450,000.
* a * The annual report of the United Kingdom Provident Institution is a good one, showing that the net new business for last year amounted to £2,082,000, which is the second largest annual new business in the history of the company. The Premium Income is now £1,061,000 per annum, while the Funds have increased to 113,276,500, out of which 1800,000 has been set aside to form an investment contingency reserve fund. During the past year there was an increase in the Funds of nearly 1,2,000,000, of which about 11,200,000 was due to the writing up of Stock Exchange securities to present
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