National Grid 2015 Annual Report Download - page 199

ShareGift: If you only have a small number of shares which would
cost more for you to sell than they are worth, you may wish to
consider donating them to the charity.
ShareGift is a registered charity (no. 1052686) which specialises
in accepting such shares as donations. For more information visit
www.sharegift.org.uk or contact Capita Asset Services.
Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs): Corporate ISAs for National
Grid shares are available from Stocktrade. For more information,
call Stocktrade on 0131 240 0443, email [e-mail]
or write to Stocktrade, 6th floor, Atria One, 144 Morrison Street,
Edinburgh EH3 8BR.
Cautionary statement
This document comprises the Annual Report and Accounts for the
year ending 31 March 2015 for National Grid and its subsidiaries.
It contains the Directors’ Report and Financial Statements, together
with the independent auditors’ report thereon, as required by the
Companies Act 2006. The Directors’ Report, comprising pages 06
to 75 and 164 to 191, has been drawn up in accordance with the
requirements of English law, and liability in respect thereof is also
governed by English law. In particular, the liability of the Directors
for these reports is solely to National Grid.
This document contains certain statements that are neither
reported financial results nor other historical information. These
statements are forward-looking statements within the meaning of
Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and
Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.
These statements include information with respect to our financial
condition, our results of operations and businesses, strategy, plans
and objectives. Words such as ‘anticipates’, ‘expects’, ‘should’,
‘inte nds’, ‘plans’, ‘believes’, ‘outl o o k’, ‘seeks’, ‘e stimates’, ‘targets’,
‘may’, ‘will’, ‘continue’, ‘project’ and similar expressions, as well as
statements in the future tense, identify forward-looking statements.
These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of our
future performance and are subject to assumptions, risks and
uncertainties that could cause actual future results to differ
materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-
looking statements. Many of these assumptions, risks and
uncertainties relate to factors that are beyond our ability to control
or estimate precisely, such as changes in laws or regulations,
announcements from and decisions by governmental bodies or
regulators (including the timeliness of consents for construction
projects); the timing of construction and delivery by third parties
of new generation projects requiring connection; breaches of, or
changes in, environmental, climate change and health and safety
laws or regulations, including breaches or other incidents arising
from the potentially harmful nature of our activities; network failure
or interruption, the inability to carry out critical non network
operations and damage to infrastructure, due to adverse weather
conditions including the impact of major storms as well as the
results of climate change, due to counterparties being unable
to deliver physical commodities, or due to the failure of or
unauthorised access to or deliberate breaches of our IT systems
and supporting technology; performance against regulatory targets
and standards and against our peers with the aim of delivering
stakeholder expectations regarding costs and efficiency savings,
including those related to investment programmes and internal
transformation and remediation plans; and customers and
counterparties (including financial institutions) failing to perform
their obligations to the Company. Other factors that could cause
actual results to differ materially from those described in this
document include fluctuations in exchange rates, interest rates
and commodity price indices; restrictions and conditions (including
filing requirements) in our borrowing and debt arrangements,
funding costs and access to financing; regulatory requirements for
us to maintain financial resources in certain parts of our business
and restrictions on some subsidiaries’ transactions such as paying
dividends, lending or levying charges; inflation or deflation; the
delayed timing of recoveries and payments in our regulated
businesses and whether aspects of our activities are contestable;
the funding requirements and performance of our pension
schemes and other post-retirement benefit schemes; the failure to
attract, train or retain employees with the necessary competencies,
including leadership skills, and any significant disputes arising
with our employees or the breach of laws or regulations by our
employees; and the failure to respond to market developments,
including competition for onshore transmission, and grow our
business to deliver our strategy, as well as incorrect or unforeseen
assumptions or conclusions (including unanticipated costs and
liabilities) relating to business development activity, including
assumptions in connection with joint ventures.
For further details regarding these and other assumptions, risks
and uncertainties that may affect National Grid, please read the
Strategic Report and the Risk factors on pages 173 and 176 of this
document. In addition, new factors emerge from time to time and
we cannot assess the potential impact of any such factor on our
activities or the extent to which any factor, or combination of
factors, may cause actual future results to differ materially from
those contained in any forward-looking statement. Except as
may be required by law or regulation, the Company undertakes
no obligation to update any of its forward-looking statements,
which speak only as of the date of this document.
The contents of any website references in this document do not
form part of this document.
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