John Lewis Partnership

The John Lewis Partnership is a major United Kingdom retailer, operating department stores and, through its Waitrose subsidiary, upmarket supermarkets. Unusually, it is a partnership, with the company held in trust on behalf of its employees (called partners) who receive an annual profit distribution which is usually a significant fraction of their annual salary.

Financial performance

Figures in the above table are for 52 week periods to late January and are in British Pounds. The accounts include profits both before and after partnership bonuses. While the partnership bonus takes the place of the dividend which might be paid if John Lewis was a limited company, on the basis of the tax charges discloses in the accounts, it appears that most or all of it is accepted as tax deductible remuneration by the Inland Revenue. Profit figures before and after the partnership bonus are both shown, but arguably neither of them is strictly comparable to "profit before tax" of a limited company, which is the most widely quoted profit line in the United Kingdom. This is because the group might need to pay higher basic salaries if it was a listed company and therefore did not make an unusually large profit distribution to its staff. Net profit (ie profit after tax) is also shown; this is the profit line normally quoted for US companies.

Related Topics:
British Pounds - Inland Revenue - Limited company

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Financial section of John Lewis' website: http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/TemplatePage.aspx?PageType=ARA&PageID=6.

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