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As if to prove there are other industries beside money energy and

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As if to prove there are other industries beside money, energy and minerals also grace the Footsie list.There is no indication whether the powerful array of financial profits will be accompanied by any corporate developments. Talk of bids and deals has helped financial shares hit new peaks and made a major contribution to Footsie's record-breaking run.Institutions have also had to increase their involvement to adjust to the arrival of four building societies and Norwich Union, the insurer. They remain underweight in the former mutuals and their continuing need to be strongly represented on their share registers should at least offer support.All the reporting money groups have been deeply involved in the swirling speculation which has engulfed the banking and insurance industries. A dozen Footsie constituents should between them have pounds 12bn in their corporate lockers; dividend increases and perhaps more share buy-backs should enliven the proceedings.

Financials, which now represent approaching 30 per cent of Footsie, are due to make by far the biggest splash. Their dominance is not surprising. HEAVYWEIGHTS jostle to offer their profits this week. Siemens said the new equipment, set to go into operation in the summer of 2000, will make the plant, north of the city of Aberdeen, more efficient and environmentally friendly. The project will cut emissions of noxious gases such as NO by 85 per cent, and CO2 by 50 per cent, and increase the station's efficiency by 50, Hydro-Electric said.Siemens said its main construction contract is to design, manufacture, erect, integrate and set to work the new plant at Peterhead, and the total cost of the project will be pounds 220m.The German engineering giant said the order is its seventh-largest for a power plant in Britain since the opening up of the UK electricity market to competition in the beginning of the 1990s.Dr James Martin, director of generation at Hydro-Electric, said: "The project represents the first re-powering of a major power station in the UK, although the technology has been individually proven in Europe and the US.". Siemens said the contract to increase efficiency and cut pollution is worth pounds 170-pounds 180m Work will start in late spring. SIEMENS AG, Germany's largest electronics and engineering company, said its KWU energy unit has won the contract to install new gas turbines at Peterhead Power Station, the Scottish steam power plant owned by Hydro- Electric. So, rather than the variation we see in tax treatment, we would be better off with a uniform tax structure.Perhaps surprisingly, we have moved some way towards that in recent years, but could move further.

If the tax-free lump sum in pension taxation were removed, and the remainder of Miras taken away, these two assets, which form the great bulk of personal wealth and saving, would be taxed much as Tessas and PEPs are now. The large remaining distortion would then be the continued taxation of interest income.Taxing interest income is economically inefficient when we do not tax the return to saving in pensions, housing, or equity held in PEPs. All these have different tax treatments, and are listed in rough order of generosity of tax treatment.And yet saving is above all something where we would not want the tax system to be determining choices We save because we want to be able to consume in the future. So we care little about the vehicle in which we save, except about the rate of return we expect, the risk and how accessible it is. Different tax treatments will have an enormous impact on how we save.

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