Major Investments 

During the last three years, the Group has invested approximately £4bn in two major businesses.

Catalogue Retailing

We are the market leaders in home shopping, with 3.8 million regular agency customers. We are also now the market leaders in catalogue shopping on the high street, with 448 Argos stores.

We believe GUS is well-positioned for future developments in UK shopping habits. The acquisition of Argos and the development of synergies with our Home Shopping business strengthen the Group. Progress has been made between the two businesses in developing a joint programme to widen the offer to customers, improve service and to reduce costs in purchasing, delivery and administration. This will give us a strong base for shopping both at home and on the high street.

Our penetration into the direct home shopping market is widening and will grow further by our offer of catalogues containing apparel and home textiles under the Argos brand designed to appeal to its 14 million customers.

Our involvement in electronic commerce includes transactional websites for most of our brands and interactive digital television trials. With the lessons we are learning from our website trials, we now have a programme to develop first class customer-friendly internet shopping experiences on our sites. Although internet sales are modest in size at present, they are likely to play a significant role in the retail industry in the future, particularly in the transactional side of shopping from home.

Through White Arrow, we are the largest distributor of parcels to homes, with 30% of our parcels already delivered for third parties. We are able to offer customers the whole service they require from easy selection through credit facilities to convenient home delivery.

Information Services

Following major acquisitions in recent years, we have established Experian as a global leader in information services and target marketing. During the year we have made six modest sized acquisitions, amounting in total to £24m, which have further added to our geographic spread and breadth of services.

It is a fast moving business. We are now offering a significant number of services that were not available twelve months ago, based on increased data content, development of new products and services, and expansion into new markets.

We believe the rapid growth in electronic commerce further enhances Experian’s opportunities. With an ever increasing number of transactions taking place electronically – rather than through cash or cheques – there is a growing demand for the reliable, up to date databases and services offered by Experian:

- to facilitate credit transactions of customers

- to help avoid fraudulent transactions

- to identify prospective customers, to market to them and retain them

Other Businesses

We continue to invest in our other businesses and to develop them. More detail is given on these businesses in the operational review.

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