2003

For this year, we're confident that, except in the most extreme political and economic conditions, we can deliver further significant earnings growth, even at current exchange rates, and also further cash and an increasing return on capital. And we're confident we can go on to sustain annual progress on all three measures, working hard, task by task, day by day. Where will we be exerting our 99% perspiration?

More investing

We'll allocate our resources first to our markets that are growing the fastest: higher education, English language teaching, children's publishing, testing, governments as customers, investors who need our data and pricing help in an unpredictable market.

We'll also invest to take advantage of our franchise and market share where we see our competitors are weakened by the environment. This is especially true in our business newspapers. Of course we'll make these investments carefully, but no franchise can continue - even one a century old - without nourishment.

Growing our own

Now that we have all the right parts in our company, we plan to rely more on our ingenuity than on acquisitions for new products and services. So we'll be working to create some for existing brands and to customise some. Customisation is already booming in our education business, where professors want their own unique books. It also works for FT.com subscribers who want their investments monitored, or their data fed to them their way. Organic investment means we will also have to be even more disciplined in our allocation of assets - not shying away from taking risks, but taking those with the most reliable and enduring returns.

Streamlining operations

We started on this last year. We've been pretty good at getting integration benefits from our acquisitions - we've always done better, faster than planned. Now we do that with our existing companies as well, sharing processes and back offices and efficiencies of all kinds; improving sales efforts and marketing ideas thanks to the expertise of one part of the company teaching another.