DISPOSAL OF BPO BUSINESSES

Hays PLC
18 July 2003

18 July 2003



HAYS PLC

DISPOSAL OF BPO BUSINESSES

Hays plc today announced that it has completed the sale of a number of its
Business Process Outsourcing ('BPO') operations for total cash consideration of
£21 million.

Hays BPO provides billing, call centre, transaction processing and other
services in the UK, France, Poland and Asia. It services customers in a range of
sectors including telecoms, financial services, utilities and the public sector.
Several businesses have been sold to the business services group Astron, as
follows:

Business                            Activities                  Countries

Castleton Document Technologies     Billing                     UK
Crawfords Marketing Technology      Database management         UK
DEI Document Management             Transaction Processing      UK, Poland, Asia
Customer Solutions                  Call centres                UK

The following interests have also been sold to other purchasers:

Ceritex                             Call centres                France
Secure Destruction (JV)             Confidential disposal       UK

Overall, the businesses disposed of generated turnover of £120.8 million in the
year ended 30 June 2002 and employ 4,500 staff.

After accounting for tax and transaction costs, the net proceeds are expected to
amount to approximately £16 million. The tangible net assets being disposed of
are approximately £25 million. Capitalised goodwill associated with these
disposals amounts to £31.9 million and a further £23.6 million of goodwill had
previously been charged to reserves. The proceeds of the disposals will be used
to pay down debt.

Colin Matthews, Chief Executive Officer of Hays plc, commented:

'These disposals represent another step towards our objective to transform Hays
into a focused Personnel business. The acquirers are strong and reputable
organisations with clear development plans for these businesses and we expect
them to present great opportunities to our customers and employees'.

Following these disposals the only operations remaining within Hays Commercial
division are the Consulting and Solutions and Payroll services businesses which
generated turnover of £18.4 million in the year ended 30 June 2002. The disposal
process in relation to these operations, which are profitable, is on track.

Hays will announce its preliminary results on 9 September 2003.

-ends-

ENQUIRIES

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