Private Eye has covered this. The level of profit was not normal. Some of the companies were making 50%. And the government had two lists of companies when they were awarding contracts. The priority list was for the acquaintances of ministers and MPs.
50% what? And Private Eye has also covered the NAO report, which found no evidence of this, and the GLP court case which attempted to prove the price paid was excessive and failed to do so.
No, the priority list wasn't. To approve a vendor through the normal process would have taken years, the fast track process was created to get PPE quicker than normal. I believe all but one person was unrelated to the Tories, the only person who wasn't (as I have said) repeatedly lied about their connection to the vendor, and is now facing criminal charges.
Seriously? The high court found that the operation of the priority list was unlawful [1]. You can reasonably argue that they needed to move quickly, but that doesn't explain why some companies were getting special treatment.
Obviously...profit margin, return on equity, return on capital, return on assets,
return on investment, operating margin, gross margin, net margin...to be so ignorant that it is obvious.
The reason they got special treatment was because of the speed. That was what the priority list was for - "establishes that presence on the high priority lane did not confer any advantage at the decision-making stage of the process", what you have linked me is exactly what I was just told you. The award wasn't unlawful, the govt did not report on the detail of the contracts within the time period required...that was unlawful, but a function of the process (again, the contracts were awarded outside the usual process so all the information wasn't gathered...the NAO conducted a full audit of the contracts, iirc, before the contract details were reported in the public database).
Why are you so hard at work trying to come up with excuses for obvious sleazy dealing?
There are companies that made no upfront investment, ordering equipment from China without any understanding of what they are ordering, any relevant experience, and huge quantities fo PPE had to be destroyed because it was not fit for purpose and did not meet regulatory requirements. Most of the companies contracted had no experiece of dealing with medical equipment ever before. I personally know people who have experience in the industry and government passed them up for contracts in favour of the shitsters that were chosen.
What equity? What capital? What assets? What investment? These mostly weren't PPE manufacturers or even PPE suppliers. Often they were little more than drop shippers with a 50% profit margin. It is that simple.
And the fact that companies were treated the same when they were assessed doesn't alter the fact that being assessed sooner rather than later is a massive advantage.
It smells very bad.