Environment

It is our policy to ensure that our operations have as little environmental impact as is consistent with our business needs. We work to promote environmental care, to increase our understanding of environmental issues and to spread environmental best practice throughout our businesses. As a software publisher and services provider, our business activities have minimal environmental impact; however, we encourage all our operating companies to pursue environmental best practice. We make maximum use of internet and telephone based tools to manage international meetings in order to minimise air travel where possible and many of our operating companies have introduced policies and incentives to reduce car use.

We are strengthening our environmental activity with continued focus on waste reduction, energy minimisation and reduced packaging as we continue to work to minimise any negative impact on the environment. We will continue to work on this area in the coming years.

Major initiatives from our operating companies include:

• Recycling facilities in all office locations
• Recycled water used for landscaping in many office locations across North America and Mainland Europe
• Campaigns to minimise production of manuals, printed materials and packaging associated with product sales across all regions
• Increasing use of the internet for distribution of printed materials
• Campaigns to minimise power use in the UK and Mainland Europe
• Measurement of the carbon footprint in the UK
• The Group’s annual report is now only mailed in hard copy if requested by the shareholder (rather than the shorter Summary Financial Statements) and users are encouraged to view our full report via the website.