2004 marked a successful financial year for the entire CHG-MERIDIAN company group

The CHG-MERIDIAN company group revealed new business of 616.1 million euros for the financial year ending 31st December 2004. In comparison to the results in 2003 which totalled 466.7 million euros, this represents growth of 32.1 percent.

In 2004 CHG-MERIDIAN succeeded in notching up record results in almost every national company. In Germany, the new investment volume* rose from 397.4 million euros in 2003 to 507.4 million euros in 2004. That corresponds to an increase of 27.7 percent. In our second largest company in the United Kingdom we were able to boost results by 7.9 percent to 59.1 million euros. New business almost doubled in the Netherlands and Belgium, while in Austria results significantly exceeded the level of the previous year as well as the planning targets. The total inventory for all units which have been leased via CHG-MERIDIAN in 2004 amounts to over 1 million, corresponding to stock capital of nearly 2 billion euros.

The overall positive development in European business can also be seen in the fact that, despite the growth in Germany, the share of European companies in the entire new business rose from 15 percent to around 18 percent. Jürgen Mossakowski, Chief Executive Officer of CHG-MERIDIAN Deutsche Computer Leasing AG, explained the reason for this: “This positive development clearly shows that our philosophy and extensive services have not only convinced the German market of our merits – they have also put us firmly on the road to international success. In 2004 we came a significant step closer to realising our aim of becoming a true European player.“

Brokerage and logistic centres
In our brokerage and logistics centres in Egham near London and in Mörfelden/Frankfurt we achieved a total turnover of 149,000 units in 2004, that is 15,000 units more than in the previous year, a plus of 11.2 percent. Turnover rose by 9.4 percent to 15.2 million euros. As before, the main performer was the PC segment, which also comprises monitor units, and the Notebooks sector. A total of 92,000 PCs and monitors as well as 21,000 Notebooks were sold here. The units taken back from leasing contracts are registered, made ready and cleaned in the logistics centres, so that they can then be sold by Brokerage. Units that cannot be remarketed are disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner. We could also record tremendous progress in the area of data deletion. The number of security-deleted units rose to 7,500 units in 2004. This is more than twice as many as in 2003 where it was still only 3,500 units. The additional service “secure data deletion“ provided by CHG-MERIDIAN means that the data deletion has been evaluated by the TÜV (German Technical Monitoring Association), which demonstrated that it is impossible to recreate the data according to the prior art. This process is particularly interesting for customers who need to be certain that their sensitive company data have been deleted from IT systems. In addition to this procedure, there is also a simple data deletion process. However, the data can be recreated here using certain techniques.

Staff
A total of 332 employees were working for the CHG-MERIDIAN company group on 31st December, an increase of 23.4 percent. Of the total number of staff, 245 are employed in Germany alone.

Summary and outlook
In 2004 one of the main objectives was to expand the activities of the European national countries and, in conjunction with this, increase the market share of CHG-MERIDIAN in the European leasing market. With the takeover of a company in Italy and France, the foundation of a new national company in Russia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, we have made these objectives a reality. We are now aiming to consolidate and expand our position in these countries in 2005. In addition to developing international markets further, a key strategy in 2005 will focus on building up partnership business at home and abroad. Expectations for the planned new investment volumes of the entire company group have been set at just under 715 million euros for 2005. "We're very confident in our ability to meet this target, as companies have revealed a clear readiness to invest. In the countries in which we have founded new companies, we've already witnessed very interesting contacts and business developments, making us very optimistic here as well that we shall reach our planned objectives“, comments Peter Horne, Chairman of CHG-MERIDIAN Deutsche Computer Leasing AG.

CHG-MERIDIAN Deutsche Computer Leasing AG, founded in 1979, is a leading European leasing company independent of manufactures and banks in the area of information technology. In addition to flexible financing offers and extensive service packages, the company's services also extend to the aftermarketing of used hardware and software. Besides Germany, CHG-MERIDIAN is active in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Russia.