I was in Chennai on Monday for the Annual General Meeting of Macmillan India Limited. We presented the 2006 results and gave some guidance about 2007. You can see a number of presentations here . In short, sales were up more than 40% while profits were flat as a result of increased long-term investment and the need to offer extremely competitive prices to customers. Of course there are some shareholders who would rather we reduced investment and increased dividends and the picture below shows the board with a dissenting shareholder seated in front of us. It's a shame the picture doesn't show the other hundred shareholders who supported the board and its investment policy on their behalf.
Here is a sad tale of the times in which we live.
A colleague went to the US this week and carried with him a luxury Harrods Christmas pudding to present to the family he was staying with. (A little early in the year, perhaps, but that allows time for a teaspoonful of whisky to be added each week to enhance the flavour on the 25th.)
At Dulles airport in Washington the package was confiscated by security at the gate for a transfer flight to Norfolk, Virginia. "We just don't know what you've been putting in the pudding," he was told.
And back in the UK and to books, just to say that we are celebrating, along with Andrew Marr, his number one position in the non-fiction best seller list with A History of Modern Britain. Just as I was beginning to wonder whether a serious book could ever displace footballers' wives' memoirs etc, along comes a quality winner. Hooray and thanks to David Hockney for the image of Andrew above.
