AGM Statement

RNS Number : 4102N

M&C Saatchi PLC

10 June 2010

 



10 June 2010

 AGM Statement

 M&C Saatchi PLC ("M&C Saatchi" or "the Company")

The Chairman of M&C Saatchi, Jeremy Sinclair, will make the following statement at today's Annual General Meeting:

"A good start has been made in 2010 and we believe the Company's performance for the full year remains in line with our expectations. Trading and visibility continues to be challenging, although we have seen some positive upturns in our consultancy business and new business activity.

During 2009 in what could have been the worst ever downturn, the Group did well to keep its revenues to a 1% decline. Our clients should be congratulated on their refusal to be pushed into knee jerk budget cuts. Our staff too deserve congratulations for their hard work in these hard times.

Our three new offices - Switzerland, Brazil and Japan- have inevitably reduced profits, but we believe in the long run the investments will prove to be well worthwhile. In 2009 they made an operating loss of £1.4m and contributed £0.8m to revenues.

Excluding new offices, the Group's operating profit was £11.6m - not a spectacular figure, but much better than we feared in the dark days of early 2009.

Since the close of 2009 we have opened new offices in Italy and in South Africa both of which we expect to do rather well, given the quality of the teams joining us. We have also expanded our presence in Greater China with a fourth office, in Guangzhou.

As announced in March, we have sold a 20% stake in the Australian agency to local management. The idea behind the move is that the more our people are masters and mistresses of their business, the better we all do. If successful, we intend to repeat this exercise elsewhere.

Certainly we aim to enshrine the entrepreneurial spirit in the future managers of the business. We pick our new graduates from those who most want to lead, to be 'masters of their own destiny' and then we train them to make the most of their talent.

Finally, it is with great regret that we saw our Founding Finance Director, Jerry Wales, move onto pastures new. His contribution to our style and substance has been outstanding. We wish him well and equally wish our new Finance Director, Jamie Hewitt, the very best of luck. I would also like to welcome Jonathan Goldstein to our board as our third non-executive director. Jonathan is currently Deputy Chief Executive of Heron International, but was for many years our trusted counsel  and advisor at Olswang."

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For further information, please contact:

M&C Saatchi plc

Jeremy Sinclair, Chairman            [phone]

David Kershaw, Chief Executive

Numis Securities Ltd                      [phone]

Brent Nabbs, NOMAD

Charles Farquhar, Corporate Broking

Tulchan Communications               [phone]

Susanna Voyle

Tom Ryner

 

END

 

 

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