Acquisition

GUS PLC
26 January 2006


26 January 2006


                                    GUS plc
                     Acquisition of ClarityBlue by Experian

GUS plc, the retail and business services group, today announces that Experian
has acquired ClarityBlue, a leading provider in the UK of bespoke marketing
database solutions for major companies. ClarityBlue complements Experian's
existing marketing businesses which help clients to target, acquire and retain
customers. The purchase price is £85m plus an earn-out of up to £15m over three
years. This has been funded from GUS' existing bank facilities.

Don Robert, Chief Executive Officer of Experian, commented:

'ClarityBlue is highly complementary to Experian's marketing information and
solutions businesses. Its addition to our existing offer will better enable us
to help our clients around the world to respond more rapidly and send customers
the right message, at the right time and over the right channel. We are very
excited about the growth opportunities available to ClarityBlue which will be
further enhanced by becoming part of Experian.'

Description of ClarityBlue

ClarityBlue designs, builds and manages marketing databases for large companies
with millions of customers. These customers can undertake multiple transactions
with the companies often on a daily basis and through different channels.
ClarityBlue helps its clients to make better-informed decisions more quickly
about how to target and acquire new customers and retain existing customers. It
works for financial services providers, entertainment companies, mobile phone
operators and Internet Service Providers. Its clients include Barclaycard,
BSkyB, Morgan Stanley, O2 and Orange. Founded in 1999, ClarityBlue employs 165
people, primarily in the UK.

When developing marketing databases for its clients, ClarityBlue uses its own
unique technology platform and analytics to integrate data and software that
best meet its clients' needs. In particular, it can link companies' existing
information on customers with external data sources to create a complete picture
of customer behaviour. Its key competitive advantage is that its technology
platform is very fast and flexible, speeding up decision-making and reducing the
lead time for delivering marketing campaigns. This is all supported by
ClarityBlue's extensive board-level consulting expertise which helps to embed it
at the heart of its clients' marketing strategies and processes.

Rationale for acquisition

ClarityBlue has a leading position in the marketing services industry in the UK,
especially in sectors such as banking and telecommunications where speed of
response is critical. With sales up by 25% in the current year, ClarityBlue has
further strong organic growth opportunities, selling more to existing clients
and attracting new clients in a broad range of sectors including retail and
telecommunications.

Experian expects to accelerate this growth. For example, ClarityBlue will be
able to embed more easily Experian's existing marketing data and solutions, such
as demographic profiling, e-mail delivery and optimisation, in its offer to
clients. In addition, the ClarityBlue technology platform complements Experian's
existing offer in the US, opening up new markets such as serving mid-sized
companies, many of whom are already clients of Experian for other services.

There will also be cost savings of several million pounds in areas such as data
processing, data purchasing and technology.

In the year to July 2006, sales are expected to be about £30m (an increase of
over 25% year-on-year) with EBIT of about £5m. This excludes any expected
revenue or cost synergies.

Enquiries

GUS
David Tyler         Group Finance Director              020 7495 0070
Fay Dodds           Director of Investor Relations

Finsbury
Rupert Younger                                          020 7251 3801
Rollo Head

GUS announcements are available on www.gusplc.com.

Certain statements made in this announcement are forward-looking statements.
Such statements are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of
risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ
materially from any expected future events or results referred to in these
forward-looking statements.

About ClarityBlue

ClarityBlue, the customer intelligence specialist, designs, builds and operates
high-performance customer data environments that link complex internal and
external data sources to build a rich picture of customer behaviour. This is
used to predict, and allows clients to manage, the future behaviour of its
customers. ClarityBlue's key competitive advantage is that it does this at
speed, because of its powerful combination of strategic thinking, a configurable
direct marketing platform, precision analytics and exceptional processing
capability. For more information go to www.clarityblue.com.

About Experian Marketing

ClarityBlue will form part of Experian's Marketing Services division, a leading
provider of direct marketing solutions in the UK, US and Continental Europe. The
division includes companies such as QAS, a leading address management software
developer, and CheetahMail, a leading provider of e-mail marketing and web
analytics solutions. The Marketing Services division provides a wide range of
solutions that enable organisations to acquire and retain customers, improve the
quality of customer data for marketing purposes and enhance the value of
customer relationships. For more information, visit www.experian.com.





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