THE Edinburgh International Conference Centre lost nearly #4m during its first full year of trading, depriving shareholders of their yearly dividend, it was revealed yesterday.
But the centre's chief executive, Hans Rissmann, insisted that the scale of the loss and the failure of the limited company to pay the dividends was expected by everyone involved in the company.
The loss for the year to the end of March 1997 amounted to #3,954,654.
But from January to December 1997, the company lost just #1.4m before depreciation, and Les Florence, the EICC's financial controller, predicted that in the ''short to medium-term'' the company would break even and would gradually start to make a profit.
''This was our first full year of operation,'' he said. ''The best businesses lose money in their first year so we were all expecting it - it is in line with our budgetary predictions.''
The EICC is a limited company shored up by investments from its single shareholder, Edinburgh City Council, which last year ploughed more funding into the conference centre - which received #1.3m - than it did into the tourist board - which had just #1m injected.
The conference centre attracted about #12.5m of investment in the city between April 1996, and March 1997, and is expected to generate more than #16m this year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article