Chairman's Message

“Buoyed by generally favourable market and stable political conditions in all of our countries, the Group has been able to deliver another solid performance in 2011. In addition to achieving our budgeted sales and bottom-line, we were able to reach some important milestones in our growth strategy. These include welcoming PET bottle and jar specialist Labplas Sdn Bhd to the family – an acquisition which brought further breadth to the Packaging Regional Business Unit activity portfolio. At the same time, our new ventures in Cambodia and Myanmar got off to a solid start. Our efforts to identify new acquisition opportunities continued at full throttle and we are currently in discussion with a number of companies that would bring significant strategic fit to our Group.

While looking to add new businesses and geographic coverage to our regional business platform, we have simultaneously reviewed our existing activities with a critical eye and concluded that the Group’s ability to remain market relevant in consumer electronics and IT service provision is limited in the long term. This led to the decision to exit from our IT business in Electra through a management buy-out (Jebsen & Jessen (SEA) maintains a minority stake) and to transfer the digital camera and headphone distribution business in Thailand to new owners.

In November we warmly welcomed Alex Chan to our Executive Board and an elaborate hand-over from the retiring Heine Askær-Jensen has been completed. We are fortunate to have found such an outstanding successor in Alex Chan and are grateful that Heine Askær-Jensen, who has had such a colossal impact in bringing the Group to where we are today, has agreed to remain on the Group’s Board of Directors for another year.

More than 200 of our employees in Thailand were directly affected by the recent floods. While fortunately no lives were lost, the considerable physical, psychological and financial burden that this imposed on our colleagues was extremely distressing. The speed with which the management team in Thailand responded was exemplary and the enthusiasm with which colleagues from throughout the region chipped in with donations of their own was a touching testimony to the increasingly ASEAN-wide spirit of solidarity that is flourishing in Jebsen & Jessen (SEA).

We enter 2012 with full order books and a generally positive outlook but also with a keen awareness of the uncertainties in the European and American economies. As the degree to which these uncertainties might affect the market conditions in ASEAN cannot yet be fully anticipated, our prudent risk policies remain as relevant as ever. Best wishes for the New Year!”