AGM Statement

20 November 2002

HAYS plc: AGM STATEMENT

Hays plc, the leading provider of outsourced business solutions, held its Annual General Meeting at noon today.  Bob
Lawson, Chairman and Colin Matthews, CEO, gave the following statement to shareholders:
Board Changes
Our Board has been greatly strengthened over the last year by the appointments of Pierre Danon, Chief Executive Officer
of BT Retail and Lesley Knox, a founder director of the investment bank British Linen Advisers and a director of a
number of other public companies.  The Board is already benefiting from the broad and varied experience that these new
non-Executive Directors bring to its deliberations and it is my pleasure to formally introduce them today.
I am particularly delighted to introduce Colin Matthews, who joined as CEO on 1 November.
Colin brings a wealth of international experience to us having lived and worked in four countries.  After various
engineering roles, followed by strategic consulting, his business experience encompassed business development in Europe
for many of GE's activities, followed by a marketing role in medical systems and full P&L responsibility for a power
generation division.  He then joined British Airways where he was Director of Technical Operations and responsible for
engineering, IT, procurement and flight operations.  In that role he was also responsible for several outsourcing
initiatives.  Latterly he has been Managing Director of Transco, the UK gas transporter, and Executive Director of
Lattice Group plc during a time of major operational and financial restructuring. 
Colin now has the helm and wanted to give you his initial impressions.
Colin Matthews' Initial Impressions
Good afternoon and thank you Bob for that introduction.  I am very glad of the opportunity to speak briefly based on my
initial impressions after three weeks in Hays.
First, I am very pleased to have joined Hays.  That is not based on any sentimental reasoning, but because I had
expected to find, and have found, very strong businesses within the Group.  By this I mean profitable businesses with
leading positions in growing markets.  That for me is a real basis for confidence about the future. 
I have set myself two priorities for my first weeks and months.  The first is to ensure we have a very sharp management
focus on running the business day to day.  The climate is tough.  Accordingly, I have set up a series of weekly reviews
with my team of executives to ensure that everyone is completely focused on doing their jobs well today and even better
tomorrow.
The second key priority I have set is to complete as quickly as possible a comprehensive review of Group strategy.  The
Board of Hays and others have been questioning whether the company is correctly shaped for the future, but even were
that not the case, as a newly appointed CEO I would regard it as critical that we reassess our strategy.  The strategy
review has already started and the objective is to maximise shareholder value.   I can tell you categorically that we
will not be defending the status quo.  Indeed I would go a little further in saying we expect that the review will lead
to changes in the shape of the group.
Deciding a strategy is essential and implementation is even more important.  I will give an update on progress at the
March 2003 announcement of interim results. 
Now I will hand back to Bob.
Update
On 31 October we issued a Trading Statement reducing our market guidance based on lower than expected volumes for
September and October.
I indicated that management were continuing to take aggressive action to reduce costs and Colin has now incorporated
regular monitoring of initiatives into his weekly programme.  Hays has traditionally been run as a lean organisation
and the focus on cost reduction has been on those activities where we had expected a seasonal uplift in business, which
has not occurred.  However, cost savings of some £10 million per annum have been identified and were taken into account
in the guidance given to the market at the time of our recent trading statement.
Reducing costs alone will not deliver value and we remain determined to take advantage of the long-term development
opportunities of our businesses.  Revenue and capital investment is therefore being maintained, notably in the areas of
expanding Personnel on the Continent of Europe, establishing crate management in the US, developing Logistics in
Continental Europe, growing our offshore processing service and preparing for the opportunities that should arise from
mail liberalisation in the UK.
Outlook
In conclusion, our trading outlook and guidance to the market on our results remain unchanged.
Enquiries:
Jon Coles      Brunswick       [phone]