‘As well as reaffirming our strategy, these results also reflect the operational expertise and excellence that our operating divisions around the world bring to bear, and fully justify our commitment to nurturing the financial strength of the Group through prudent management of capital resources.’
Mark Tucker
Group Chief Executive
Amid all the turmoil in the global markets, it is imperative that we continue to invest for the future to ensure we are positioned to accelerate out of the economic slowdown and maintain our record of outperformance.
Key to this will be our ability to prepare for, identify and capture emerging growth opportunities. With this in mind, in 2008 we continued to reinforce the already strong positions of our businesses in our chosen markets – and these efforts have continued into 2009, with a particular focus on recruiting the best talent.
Improving the efficiency of our operations remains an ongoing objective. As announced in our 2007 full-year results, the first phase of our UK cost reduction programme delivered savings of £115 million per annum. The agreement with Capita, which commenced in April 2008, will ultimately deliver a further £60 million per annum of savings and will enable our UK business to achieve its total cost savings target of £195 million by the end of 2010. In the US we are already a market leader in terms of operational efficiency and have service levels that are externally acknowledged as world class. We will continue to invest in maintaining and extending this leadership through further systems simplification, enabling us to stay ahead of the competition.
It is clear that 2009 will be a challenging year. Indeed, there is an increasing likelihood that in some parts of the world recession will continue into 2010. However, the global economy will ultimately rebound – albeit at different times and different speeds in different markets.
Given the uncertainty in the operating environment we have taken a prudent approach to our plans for 2009. This means focusing on balancing new business with cash generation, and making it our absolute priority to ensure that our balance sheet and capital position remain robust. At the same time, we will continue to position our businesses to take advantage of any improvement in market conditions.
It is my firm belief that this cautious but proactive strategy will allow us both to continue to outperform over the economic cycle.
Mark Tucker
Group Chief Executive
