Tony Cowling Underlines TNS International Growth 17/6/00 At the recent annual general meeting, Executive Chairman, Tony Cowling, told Taylor Nelson Sofres shareholders that the company was successfully expanding international business routes. As reported earlier in the week, the company has formally completed its acquisition of CMR in the US, following Federal Trade Commission approval. This move considerably strengthens the company's position in media monitoring, which reflects the strategy to focus on acquisitions in key growth sectors. According to Tony Cowling, "Market measurement and tracking represent an increasingly important part of our operations, providing ongoing, good margin business. We will continue to build on these activities and our syndicated business. In 2000, we are setting up consumer panels in Hong Kong and Malaysia and next year in The Philippines. With the return to growth in the Asian market, our global clients are looking for the same quality of information on consumer purchasing habits that we supply to them in other parts of the world." He continued "As we increase our investment into Internet-related activity, one of the results is that we are seeing continued growth in the number of contracts where we measure and evaluate website performance. Companies such as Nestlé, Planet Medica, QXL and StepStone have all used our innovative website evaluation programme, WebEval. Our alliance with NetValue continues to expand. We have recently entered an agreement to set up an Internet audience measurement panel in Spain, alongside those we currently provide in the US, France, Germany and the UK." TNS has made other acquisitions in 2000, the most notable being Piar and Siar, a leading marketing information company in Turkey. According to Mr Cowling, operations in Europe are generally showing excellent growth. "We have invested substantially in Europe over the past few years and our operations in Germany, Scandinavia and Central and Southern Europe are performing extremely well, with growth rates ahead of those of the local markets. Our results will, however, be impacted by the weakness of the Euro. In France, we have successfully rebased our customised business by focusing on contracts with stronger profit potential and, as underlying growth returns to market levels in this country, we are achieving the higher margins we anticipated. In the UK, we are currently refocusing the customised business on key sectors and increasing investment into our consumer panel businesses. This year it is predicted that business in the US will represent a larger share of TNS turnover. Mr Cowling commented, "Already this year we have won a number of $1 million-plus contracts. In the US, these include a substantial market sizing project for UPS and a customer satisfaction study for utility company Entenergy, both using our successful Miriad product, as well as a repeat customer satisfaction project for Chase Bank, now in its seventh year. Meanwhile, the existing management board of Taylor Nelson Sofres Interactive is being strengthened with the appointment of Ronny Lie as Director, New Product Development. Mr Lie's new role is effective immediately, and his key responsibilities include developing, packaging and rolling out TNS Interactive Internet research related products and services to the 40 plus TNS offices worldwide. He will also provide support and training for TNS's existing Internet research products and tools. Previously, Mr Lie worked for the Norwegian Gallup Institut (a TNS company) in their telecoms area, as well as the Institute for Social Research and the Institute for Political Science, both also in Norway.