The quarterly report revealed companies posted a collective £16.6bn in profit after tax for the period, £8.5bn lower than a year previous, with some leading names responsible for the falling figures.

Vodafone’s struggles alone wiped out almost a third of the headline figure, calculated from the 62 companies reporting their annual results between April and June 2013.

The company saw revenues struggle and made huge write-downs of £7.7bn, mainly reflecting the poor performance of its businesses in crisis-hit Spain and Italy.

Tesco too made large write-downs, which knocked £1.5bn off its own profits.

Without the effects of these two companies’ performance, UK net profits would have risen 2.9% to £25.8bn.

The 62 companies assessed posted total revenues of £360.4bn, compared to £346.4bn the previous year. Once index changes were taken into account, revenues only inched ahead by 1% in total, the weakest increase in any reporting period since mid-2010.

However, sales from the UK’s top companies rose 4.1% across the year period, with large retailers making up two-fifths of revenues from companies reporting their annual results in the quarter.

“It is true that some big one-offs have made profits seem worse than the broad spread of results would show, but even at the top line, sales growth of 1%, well behind inflation, is meagre at best, and margins have been under pressure across the board,” said Helal Miah, research investment analyst at The Share Centre.

“There are very encouraging signs of life in the UK economy so even though world growth forecasts are rather gloomy, we should see sales and margins begin to recover as the tough economic conditions of 2012 wash out of the annual numbers, and a weaker pound gives those earning in foreign currencies a boost.”