Global Expertise, Local Intelligence
Annual Accounts
Our global bureaux de change business continues to perform well and during the year we opened for the first time in Belgium and added to our branch network in North America, Asia and Europe.
In tough trading conditions we managed to increase bureaux sales by 6.32% to £823m particularly based on strong performance in all our
major overseas operations in China (up 30%), USA (up 6%) and Canada (up 12%) all of which remain highly profitable. Our joint venture
with CIMB bank in Malaysia has also performed well with turnover up 8.4%.
The UK market for airport bureaux remained depressed and we expect this to continue for us for another 18 months before contractual
changes allow us to improve our returns. UK high streets, buoyed by a competitive pound supporting inbound tourism, performed
exceptionally well.
Our direct business in the UK has also grown strongly and remains a product which delights customers (see http://www.iceplc.com/
aboutus/testimonials.html). Turnover was up 46% and profits up 30%.
